


Bones and Jammie Dodgers

by EllianaDunla



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Bone Meadows, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1515830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllianaDunla/pseuds/EllianaDunla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Doctor had done many absurd things, but running with River Song from a pack of hungry wolves that were currently devouring his Jammie Dodgers had to be worthy of a place in the top ten."</p><p>Plans for a picnic don't quite work out the way the Doctor had intended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bones

The Doctor was bored. He didn’t feel like swimming, he had read all the books in his extensive library at least three times and quite frankly the TARDIS was so fed up with him rewiring her that she had lurched so violently that he’d almost head-butted the console when he tried and failed to find his balance. What he really needed was an adventure of some kind, something that didn’t take place on his ship.

And that was where the trouble began. Because it was absolutely no fun at all to go and have an adventure on his own, and the Ponds were too busy enjoying their honeymoon on a planet with lots of sunshine, a deep blue sea and a very nice beach. And the Doctor was not invited. Not that he wanted to, honestly, but it was only when they were gone that he realised that it was awfully quiet around him. That is why he took companions in the first place; to have someone to talk to, to have company. Travelling on his own was… bad, for multiple reasons.

He’d told the Ponds that he would come collect them in fourteen days. By now only four of them had passed, but he was already seriously considering jumping the remaining ten ahead to pick them up. He was a Time Lord with a time machine; he could do that. Except he was very likely to get a lot of strange looks from Amy and Rory when they asked him what he’d done with his “break from them,” as Amy had jokingly called it and he said that he just jumped ahead to go get them. No, definitely not a good idea.

‘So, where do we go then, old girl?’ he asked the TARDIS. Where were the mauve alerts when he needed them? Of course he could always set the destination to random and see where he ended up. He did love a good surprise from time to time.

His fingers were already hovering over the keys when the scanner made a noise. She never was the most subtle of ships, preferring to drop him off wherever she liked or wherever she felt he needed to be. That was the reason why he had almost ended up with a concussion just now.

The face looking back at him from the screen was River’s.

‘You want me to go and see _her_?’ He told himself that it hadn’t sounded quite so incredulous as he thought it did.

The picture didn’t change. The TARDIS merely hummed in what he thought was annoyance. _I’ve handed you a suggestion and still you keep complaining_ was the underlying message he heard.

Fact was, although the Doctor would never really admit it to anyone, that he still didn’t know what to make of Dr River Song. She popped in and out of his life, lording spoilers over him – and enjoying it, definitely enjoying it – shooting things and flirting with him as if she had done nothing else all her life. _She’s Mrs Doctor from the future_ , Amy had said the first time she’d met her. The Doctor had been quick to steer the conversation away from that tricky subject, but it was true that there was quite a bit of evidence supporting that theory, not in the very least because she had known his _name_ when he met her in the Library. And he sort of liked her. But she had also admitted to killing a man and ending up in prison for it. She clearly wasn’t the safest person to be around.

But then, neither was he.

The TARDIS’s humming sounded more like _Get a move on_ now.

‘You are conspiring against me,’ he accused his ship. ‘You and River. You even fly better with her in charge.’ Not that he would be heard to say that whenever that woman was around. ‘You like her better than me, don’t you?’

His ship’s silence spoke volumes.

Well, he supposed it couldn’t hurt to spend some time getting to know her. And he really was growing tired of his own company; talking to himself was bearable only for so long. Besides, River was one of the universe’s biggest unsolved mysteries and he did love a bit of a mystery. He might as well spend some time trying to figure her out.

So it would have to be something that didn’t involve lots and lots of running. A picnic would be nice. He’d done that once, well, his former self had done that when he ran into her at Asgard and it had been surprisingly nice, if a little awkward because he had done the Library not too long before that and he found it rather difficult to look at her knowing where she was headed next. Yes, a picnic would be nice. And he knew just the place. He just happened to know that there were some very lovely meadows on Delnos Beta.

* * *

 

Stormcage could get very boring very quickly, especially since none of the guards dared to talk to her since her latest break-out when she had gone to deal with the Pandorica problem. River had pointed out that it had been a crisis and that, from their point of view, she had been gone for less than a day. By her standards that was actually quite reasonable, and she had a lingering suspicion that the new guard had not minded the kissing as much as he claimed.

Still, she was entitled to books, so she wasn’t entirely bored out of her mind, and there had been vague promises lately of letting her out for a mission so that she could earn her pardon. After all the escaping that she did, the Stormcage staff was rather eager to see the back of her. The feeling was entirely mutual; she’d love to have a place of her own without bars, where the sun would shine occasionally.

It was well past midnight and she was lying in her bed, trying to find some sleep, but she wasn’t exactly tired. Doing nothing all day tended to have that effect, and she didn’t need as much as sleep as ordinary humans anyway.

It was a relief to hear the tell-tale sound of the TARDIS materialising just outside her cell and River smiled, even though the sound of the brakes made her cringe inside. That man! Would he never learn? But it had been so long since she heard that at night that she couldn’t really bring herself to care. Lately she had been seeing quite a bit of a younger Doctor, one who didn’t know yet who she was and who certainly didn’t come to pick her up from Stormcage. She had to search him out herself. That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t fun to leave him messages all across space and time and let him come to her, but she missed the older him, the one who knew about their marriage and her identity, not one who narrowed his eyes at her, more than implied that he didn’t trust her and kept asking who she was. Oh, she loved him too, but he sure was hard work young.

Not that she had been much better.

The door opened and the Doctor swaggered out, manic grin on his face as he adjusted his bowtie. ‘Hi honey, I’m home.’

He really made it too easy on her. ‘And what sort of time do you call this?’ she wondered, making a show of checking her watch for the time. Nearly two o’clock in the morning.  
Judging by the shock on his face the lateness of the hour only now started to dawn on him. It was probably a good thing that she didn’t sleep naked; his eyes were already close to popping out of their sockets. His _young_ eyes.

 _Oh_.

He was looking at her as if he had never even seen her like this before. Young. He was young. This was not a version of her husband who knew that they were married. This version of him likely didn’t even know who she was. River tried and rather failed to ignore the by now far too familiar stab of pain when he didn’t know her as well as he had, as well as he would, in his future and her past.

‘Well, a bit later than I thought,’ he admitted. ‘You were… ehm… sleeping?’

‘Counting sheep, my love,’ she reassured him. Not that it had worked. ‘So, where are we off to?’

The Doctor wagged his finger at her. ‘No, no, no! That’s not how it works, River Song. We’ve got to diaries first!’ He sounded – and looked – like a young boy who had just learned how to tie his own shoelaces and was extremely proud of the fact. ‘Look, I’ve got a brand-new diary.’ By now he had arrived at the bars and was waving a well-known diary in front of her nose. Except that it was not the way she recalled it. The one she knew looked exactly like this one, but it was old and battered. This one was new.

So yes, of course she’d known that at one point the Doctor must have acquired a diary of his own, but River had never even seen him without one. True, she usually had to remind him to get it out and figure out where they were, but he’d had it for as long as she had known him. There was only one time she hadn’t seen it, but that was during the Pandorica adventure and neither of them had found the time what with the total event collapse, the rebooting of the universe and her parents’ marriage. They could be forgiven for that.

‘Diaries,’ she agreed. ‘Although I’d very much like to do that in the TARDIS, sweetie. Not to rush you, but there’ll be a guard passing by in about three minutes and I don’t think they’ll give me permission to leave.’ That’d be the day.

The Doctor flapped his hands about. ‘Right. Getting you out.’ He stared at the lock as if he could open it by mere wishing.

Realisation hit again. ‘You’ve never done this before, have you?’

The Doctor’s smile widened. ‘I’m going to do this again? Good, I’m liking it.’

Realising that she may have dropped a spoiler on him without meaning to – good grief, she was getting worse than him – she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. ‘Aren’t you going to get me out?’ When this didn’t seem to prompt a stroke of genius, she added: ‘Sonic, Doctor.’ She could easily get herself out, but winding the Doctor up was certainly entertaining.

‘I’ve got to park it _in_ the cell next time,’ he muttered as he dug up the sonic from his pocket and tossed it in the air before catching it and pointing it at the lock.

River only had to grab her diary before she left the cell; all the other things she needed were already in the TARDIS, and she would have taken care to hide them from the Doctor.

‘You don’t want to do that,’ she told him, remembering all too well the last and only time he had attempted it. It had taken a lot of imagination to come up with an explanation for the mess that would satisfy the guards and even then they had been rather sceptic. People of her stature usually didn’t manage to break the prison cots all by themselves. A TARDIS landing on one of them did however. ‘You never know where you’ll land, not with your driving.’

He favoured her with an indignant look. ‘I’ll show you driving, Dr Song!’

‘If you say so, sweetie.’ She grinned as she made her way to the TARDIS, the Doctor following behind, muttering under his breath about how there was nothing wrong with the way he flew the TARDIS and how he maintained that it was a brilliant noise. In her future she must already have teased him about the brakes, River noted.

The TARDIS hummed when she entered.

‘I’ve missed you too, old girl,’ she said. The Doctor didn’t hear her, still being too flustered about her critique considering his driving. There were longer gaps between his visits these days. Once there had been a time she had seen him every night and oh, what adventures they’d had. These days sometimes weeks went by that she didn’t see him. It had been almost three weeks this time.

By the time she had reached the console, the Doctor had closed the door behind him and River sent the ship into the time vortex before the guards came and found a big blue box in the corridor that had no reason to be there.

‘I can do that!’ the Doctor protested.

River smiled. ‘I know. You can enter our destination.’ She parked them in the vortex and then turned back to face him. ‘Well then, diaries?’

Of course by now he had almost completely forgotten about that. Bless. ‘Right. Diaries.’ He made a show out of opening his and sending her an inquisitive look over it. ‘Dr Song, have you done the crash of Byzantium yet?’

She thought for a moment, and checked her own diary to make sure, but it didn’t sound familiar.

‘Obviously ringing no bells,’ the Doctor commented. River had a lingering suspicion that he was quoting someone, probably her, her from the future. He always did enjoy these timey-wimey games of his. ‘Hm, have you done the Pandorica?’

She didn’t even need to think about that one. ‘Yes, I have.’ And it was a relief to find that at this point in both their time streams they had at least one adventure in common. She used to take their shared experiences for granted until they weren’t there anymore. Then they had become infinitely precious to her. Strange how you never seemed to fully appreciate something until it wasn’t there anymore. ‘How long ago for you?’

‘Two, no, three weeks ago. I’ve been taking the Ponds on their honeymoon since.’

River stifled another smile. Only the Doctor would invite himself to somebody else’s honeymoon. Not that she was complaining; if her parents would have had a normal honeymoon, she might not be who she was today. ‘You haven’t seen me since,’ she concluded. ‘Are they sleeping?’

‘I dropped them off on a planet to… to do human-y stuff.’ He flushed a bright red and this time River didn’t suppress the smile. ‘But that doesn’t matter now.’ He took the stairs up to the console two at a time and began his habitual dance around it, flipping levers and pushing buttons, sending them through the vortex in such a way that River had to grab the railing in order to remain on her own two feet. ‘Well then, how do you feel about a picnic, River Song?’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘A picnic?’

The ship lurched when the Doctor pushed another lever. River casually leaned against the console and quickly switched the blue stabilisers before he could notice.

But of course he did. ‘Did you touch something?’ he asked suspiciously, head poking around the time rotor.

River donned her most innocent expression. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

The Doctor didn’t buy it. ‘Stabilisers are boring, River,’ he chided. ‘And that’s just rude, flying someone else’s ship!’

‘Who says she’s only yours, Doctor?’ she questioned. This wasn’t strictly speaking a spoiler, and she had a feeling that the Doctor suspected about them anyway after that stunt she had pulled with his question whether or not she was married after her parents’ wedding.

True to expectations he blushed. Not that he was ever out of sorts for very long. He had perfected avoiding and running to a form of art after all. ‘Delnos Beta,’ he announced, parking them with the brakes on. She suspected he did it on purpose. ‘Great planet. It’s got blue people, River, _blue_ people. I love blue.’

‘I would never have guessed,’ she commented dryly.

The Doctor ignored that. ‘They’re great people, River. They’re nothing like humans. Well, they look like humans, a bit, but they’re blue!’

‘You mentioned that, dear,’ she remarked, trying to hide her amusement at his rambling. He wasn’t quite _her_ Doctor yet, but the mannerisms and the enthusiasm were all too familiar and she loved it. ‘So, when are we?’

‘River Song, you are about to enter the year 6723 and we are on the northern continent of the planet. And it’s…’ He checked his watch. ‘Yes, it’s summer and outside those doors are the famous meadows with a hundred different kinds of grass. There’s even purple grass. How cool is that?’ He offered her his arm. ‘Dr Song, will you accompany me to a picnic?’

Meadows. The word rang a bell somewhere. Older him might have asked her about them, if they had done them yet. Something told her that if this was what her Doctor had been referring to, this Doctor’s plans for a picnic might not go all that smoothly. But then, when did his plans go the way he wanted them to? And there was no reason to tell him already. That would be a spoiler.

She took the proffered arm. ‘Well, Doctor, I think I’d like that.’

* * *

 

In the end it took a good long while before they eventually made it out of the doors. They were almost out when the Doctor suddenly realised that if they were going to have a picnic, then maybe they should bring food and drink. That generally was required when going on a picnic. The TARDIS was feeling kind and let him find the bigger-on-the-inside picnic basket almost right away. Well, given the fact that she had been the one to insist that he went to fetch River, she’d better.

As for River Song herself, she definitely seemed to be enjoying herself as she packed the basket. And she obviously knew him well. She packed all of his favourites without even thinking about it, even though she didn’t take either fish fingers or custard, but he did see her slipping quite a few Jammie Dodgers in. So, in his future he must know her really well, that much was obvious, and clearly at some point he would like her enough to marry her. He still wasn’t sure how that would happen. At the moment he tried to do his best to match her flirting, but every once in a while she would do or say something and then he would be flailing about like a fish on dry land, lost for words. And she definitely liked that. He’d seen that wicked grin of hers.

There were lots of other items disappearing in the basket as well, things he assumed River liked, but he didn’t know that for certain yet. He made a mental note to pay attention to that, because even though he wasn’t sure where this – whatever _this_ was – was going to end up, he actually liked River. She was clever, resourceful, witty, undoubtedly had amazing hair, and clearly was going to be around in his future. It was the inevitability of her really that he found hardest to deal with. He wanted to be in control of his own future and if he was going to have a wife, he’d rather like a say in the matter.

His thoughts returned to the here and now when he realised that he had been staring at River and had therefore completely failed to notice that the last things River had put in the basket were decidedly non-edible. The blanket he could justify – they needed something to sit on – the rope was more dubious – but it was always handy to have – but he had to draw the line at the gun.

‘River!’ he exclaimed.

She really looked far too innocent when she glanced over her shoulder back at him. ‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘No guns,’ he decreed.

‘We might need it,’ she replied.

‘We’re going on a _picnic_ ,’ the Doctor pointed out. ‘No running today. Apparently running is bad for human digestion.’

‘I’m merely preparing,’ she said, wholly unconcerned. ‘I’m on an outing with you, dear. Who knows what we’ll run into.’

She had a point about trouble finding him. Trouble seemed to follow him wherever he went, or maybe that was just the TARDIS dropping him off in the middle of it for reasons only known to herself. But that didn’t mean he condoned the use of guns. Thus far he hadn’t been in a situation that couldn’t be solved by using the local resources, his brain and his screwdriver. And he wasn’t in any hurry to declare River’s gun part of the local resources. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure how good a shot she was. True, she had shot his fez, but it could have been a lucky shot.

‘River, you could hurt someone!’ he protested, already sensing that his objections would fall on deaf ears.

‘That was rather the point of having a gun,’ she returned.

‘Do you even know how to use it? Other than to shoot my fez?’ he asked as a last resort. He’d seen her use Jack’s squareness gun in the Library – and heaven knew where and when she had gotten hold of that – but that was on walls. This was not the kind of gun to use on walls. This was a fifty-second century meant-to-injure-and-kill-gun.

River grinned a grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on a starving wolf that had its prey cornered. ‘Doctor, don’t you ever wonder what happened to the Dalek in the National Museum?’

This time he actually gulped. No, he hadn’t wondered. He’d just assumed that it had been delayed. Honestly, he’d had more urgent things on his mind at the time. At the same time there was something strangely thrilling about River killing a Dalek. She was good, he’d have to give her that.

‘Right. Dalek. Right.’ Realising he was becoming slightly incoherent, he decided to yield. ‘Picnic. Come along, Song.’ He contemplated the sound of that. ‘Doesn’t sound quite like Pond. Pond definitely sounds better. I should make you an honorary Pond. Not that Song doesn’t sound good,’ he hastened to say, realising that may have been a tad bit offensive and he fully expected to be met with that stare she directed at him when she thought he was being absurd. Not that he’d seen her all that often already, but he already was rather well acquainted with _that_ look.

To his surprise, she was biting back laughter, unsuccessfully, as if she was privy to some piece of information only known to her. Given how they worked, she just might. ‘Let’s go, Doctor. Wouldn’t want the Jammie Dodgers to go stale before you’ve figured out what to call me.’

He faked shock, but in an attempt at being a gentleman took the basket from her and took her hand, all but dragging her with him back to the console room. ‘The meadows, Dr Song. They take up most of the northern continent and we’re quite a bit to the south and the east, so this is mainly red and purple grass.’

‘And you like red,’ River stated.

The Doctor looked at her in surprise. ‘Did I tell you that? In my future?’ Along with his name and several other things he at this point in time really didn’t want to tell her.

She laughed. ‘Doctor, you’ve been moaning about wanting to be a ginger for centuries.’

‘Ah.’ That was rather a good point. To distract himself from thinking about his future, about which she was never going to answer his questions, he opened the doors and allowed her to first. ‘Dr Song, I give you the famous meadows of Delnos Beta.’ Whatever he was going to do with her in future, he’d like to think that this at least was equally spectacular. These meadows were famous all over the galaxy, and quite popular with the intergalactic tourist, but he’d chosen an area without the tourists. Why go where everybody else was going already? What fun was there in that?

‘Doctor, you said there were purple and red grasses here,’ River said. That tone of voice was familiar too, but River didn’t have the monopoly on it. The Doctor instantly recognised it as the tone his companions often used when something didn’t go quite according to plan. ‘This grass isn’t red.’

It wasn’t. This grass was more in shades of blue, green and bluish purple. ‘We must have gone a bit farther north than I thought,’ he observed. He gave River a stern look. ‘And that has nothing to do with my driving. It’s all the TARDIS’s doing. But it’s nice, the north. The north is _great_ , River. This grass is really soft, we won’t even need that blanket. And they’ve got woods too, although not as great as the meadows. They have little villages and…’ He stopped talking when he stepped outside and something crunched underneath his shoes. He peeked down cautiously. ‘Bones,’ he finished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is already written. It just needs to be edited, which won’t take longer than a week, and will probably be sooner.  
> Anyway, in case this wasn’t clear, this story is set between series 5 and 6 for the Doctor, and after the Pandorica for both. This is my interpretation of the Bone Meadows River mentions in Time of the Angels.  
> Reviews would be welcome.


	2. Wolves

If someone had asked River in advance what she thought would happen when the Doctor came to Stormcage to invite her on a picnic, her answer would have been trouble. She didn’t even need to think about it. They did have normal dates – normal here having the meaning of not saving planets and having to run for their lives – but they usually didn’t happen when he was this young and when he didn’t know that they were married. And he had more or less complained about being bored. The TARDIS was likely to drop them off somewhere they would be in no danger of being bored. They might however be in danger.

It started with not ending up in the place the Doctor had meant for them to go. Not that that was anything out of the ordinary; considering his driving skills it was something of a miracle they had ended up on the right planet. No, it was more because she had a slight suspicion about what today could turn out to be, because of something older him had asked her not all that long ago. When they were doing diaries then, he’d inquired if she had done the Bone Meadows yet after he had asked her about the Pandorica. So he knew that sometime after the Pandorica for her she would have an adventure that centred around Bone Meadows. And then younger him had told her they were going to have a picnic on some famous meadows. River Song didn’t have all that much faith in things like coincidence.

This Doctor however was still completely oblivious to the possibility of disaster, jabbering on almost poetically about the benefits of the northern meadows. ‘It’s nice, the north. The north is _great_ , River. This grass is really soft, we won’t even need that blanket. And they’ve got woods too, although not as great as the meadows. They have little villages and…’

She had been listening to him with a fond smile on her face, but when he stopped abruptly, she started paying attention. The Doctor had been overcome by a fit of enthusiasm – some things never really changed, no matter what his age – all but bouncing out of the TARDIS in his eagerness to go and explore, but he stopped in mid-motion, glancing down at his feet, expression on his face turning to horror when he realised what he was standing on.

‘… Bones,’ he finished.

River followed his gaze. She had not quite known what to expect when her Doctor had mentioned Bone Meadows, but she hadn’t thought she would need to take it all that literally. But here they were and the Doctor was standing on bones that were definitely humanoid in origin, although too frail to be human.

‘Doctor, what is that?’ she asked. She was glad she’d had the presence of mind to add her scanner to the pile of things to take with them.

The Doctor beat her to it. He’d jumped off the bones as if he’d been stung by a wasp and brandished the sonic at them in the same motion. He had the habit of holding the screwdriver as if it was a weapon when really, what good did he think it was in a fight? Was he going to assemble a cabinet at them or something?

She’d scan for life signs except that it was painfully obvious that there were none. These bones were only the remains of something that had once been alive, probably one of the locals, but judging by the state of them, this person had been dead for a good long while already, and it had been a rather violent death by the look of it. The skull was lying a good few yards to the left, River spotted the arms to her right and the Doctor had just jumped off the legs.

‘It’s a native of this planet,’ the Doctor declared when he took in the readings of the sonic. ‘But it’s just bones, nothing else on them.’

‘Except the teeth marks,’ River remarked. She bended down to get a closer look for herself. The bones looked like bones would look after you’d given them to a dog to chew on. ‘If you’re going to dabble as a coroner, sweetie, you’ve got some way to go yet.’

The Doctor started pacing and flapping his hands about in that way he did when he was a bit out of his depth, when he encountered something he had not expected and it was the wrong kind of surprise. And maybe this was not the best time to mention that he looked utterly adorable when he did it. ‘River, it isn’t right!’

‘Some wild animal attacked one of the locals and ate him,’ she pointed out. ‘It happens, Doctor.’ She studied the marks a bit closer. ‘Could have been a wolf.’

‘There aren’t any,’ the Doctor said, still doing the thing with his hands. ‘There are no wolves in this system, not until the ninetieth century, when the humans finally discover it and bring their pets with them. Lots and lots of alien tourists on this planet, but not the humans, because they all think this planet is dull and they’re just not interested. They’re a bit late to the party. They only come here in about two thousand years with wolves to deal with an infestation of rabbits eating all the grass. Well, I say rabbits, but really they’re nothing like rabbits at all. They’re just very small and furry and they’ve got rather big ears…’

‘Like a rabbit,’ she concluded, smile tugging at her lips. No matter what age he was, he always had that ability to ramble about completely unrelated things in the face of an impending crisis.

‘Well, a bit like a rabbit,’ he admitted. ‘But really nothing like them. But if you want to call it a rabbit…’

‘I think _you_ called it a rabbit, dear.’ River shrugged and turned back to the matter at hand. ‘So, not a wolf then.’ There were more big predators to choose from that she knew of, and then some that she didn’t know about. It wasn’t all that big a deal.

‘There aren’t any big predators on Delnos Beta,’ he lectured. ‘None that could have caused this.’ He made a gesture in the general direction of the arms. ‘Not for at least two millennia. Whatever did this, River, it’s way out of time.’

Bones were not something to smile over, but she did feel almost relieved to have something to investigate, because, truth be told, the Doctor had not been the only one to have been bored prior to the beginning of this adventure. She craved the running, the thrill of an adventure and she _really_ wished she hadn’t put her gun in the basket still dangling from the Doctor’s wrist.

'Still only just the one victim,’ she said. One that they knew of anyway.

But that was where she was wrong, and the Doctor was in the process of pointing it out to her when she saw it herself. The grass was almost knee-high in places, but here and there she could see bits of white if she really looked for it. More bones. She was standing in a meadow that was filled with lots and lots of bones. This wasn’t a meadow as much as it was a graveyard.

‘That’s got to be more than one predator,’ she concluded.

‘That’s a lot more than one predator,’ the Doctor agreed.

‘So, what are we going to do now?’ she asked, letting him take the lead for once. It wasn’t because she didn’t have a single clue what to do about this herself. Not at all. And going back to the TARDIS and relocating to where they had wanted to go was most likely not on the agenda.

Right on cue she heard a low growling behind her. They’d wandered a bit away from the TARDIS in order to get a closer look at the skull. Well, when she said they, she meant the Doctor, who’d been waving the sonic about as if he was trying to get readings from all of the area at once. Now when she turned around she suddenly found a wolf standing between them and the TARDIS doors.

‘Ah,’ the Doctor said, as if this was only a very minor setback, something easily fixed with one flash of the sonic.

In River’s opinion it might be a bit more serious than all that, especially considering the fact that this was not an ordinary wolf. Well, it looked like an ordinary wolf, it behaved like an ordinary wolf and it certainly sounded like an ordinary wolf, but River was convinced that an ordinary wolf was not usually the size of a full-grown horse. And her gun was still somewhere in that picnic basket that she currently couldn’t reach without taking her eyes off the monster in front of her.

‘Anytime you’d like to come up with a plan is fine by me, Doctor,’ she told him.

As it turned out, his plan was rather predictable. ‘Run!’

* * *

 

 From the moment he had first stepped onto the remains of a Delnosian – and had broken aforementioned remains in the process – the Doctor had known that something was very wrong. Now that he found himself confronted with a wolf the size of a horse blocking their way to the TARDIS, he knew for sure.

‘Run!’ he yelled, grabbing River’s hand and dragging her with him in a direction that was hopefully leading them as far away from the beast as possible. The fact that he was in danger didn’t dampen the rush of excitement he felt at discovering a new life form, something that no one had ever seen before. Come to think of it, though, some people may have seen it, just before the wolf got to them and ended their lives. Now that realisation made him sort out his priorities.

‘Do you know where we’re going?’ River asked, easily keeping up with him. He wondered how she did that; it wasn’t as if she got a lot of physical exercise in her tiny cell in Stormcage. Just how many times did he break her out in his future?

‘Of course I do,’ he said, faking an indignant tone of voice, because really, he had no idea where they were going at all, except that it appeared that they were running west.

‘You don’t,’ River concluded. She cast a glance over her shoulder to ascertain that the beast remained at a safe distance.

‘I just told you I knew where we’re going!’ he reminded her, following her example and looking over his shoulder at their pursuer. The wolf was definitely following and it had definitely singled them out as its next meal. The saliva was dripping from its jaws, which was decidedly not a good sign.

‘Rule One, Doctor,’ River replied.

He had to admit that she may have a point with that. She clearly knew him much better than he knew her, which was all kinds of unfair. And he kept on wondering who she was and why on earth he would end up married to her in his future. That question always went hand in hand with the question of who she had killed. And it really wasn’t a good time to ponder about either right now.

Because that wolf was fast, and if they continued as they were, they would end up wolf’s dinner in less than five seconds. Time for a different approach.

He let go of River’s hand, stopped abruptly and turned around, taking the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and holding it out like it was a shield, using the setting that produced a high noise that was almost too high to hear for him, but that was distinctly unpleasant for the big wolf thingy chasing them.

True to expectations the wolf skidded to a stop and let out a whining that sounded almost pitiful. At least it had stopped making attempts on their lives, which the Doctor considered progress.

It also gave him the time to study the creature in front of him. And now that he was not forced to run for his life, he could properly admire it. ‘Look at you,’ he said appreciatively. ‘You are beautiful!’

‘Not this again,’ he heard River mutter under her breath. ‘Doctor, it’s a wolf! You can’t _reason_ with it!’

 _It’s a carnivorous swarm in a suit, you can’t reason with it!_ The memory of the Library was rather strong all of a sudden, and very unwelcome. Strange how the farther away he got from that event, the more he began to dread it and the more it began to hurt. ‘Yes, I can,’ he disagreed, loudly, to drown out the thoughts he didn’t want to be thinking. The wolf was more important now. Well, he wasn’t sure how receptive the wolf would be to reason after having been subjected to _that_ noise, but he had to give it a chance at least.

He could almost hear River rolling her eyes behind him. ‘Doctor, you do _not_ speak wolf.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. He turned back to the animal. ‘Well then, who are you? Where are you from? You’re not native to this planet, not even to this system. What are you doing here of all places?’

He definitely had the beast’s attention now.

‘Doctor, now is _not_ the time to chat. Let’s go!’ River urged.

The Doctor was still listening to the animal and took a little while answering her. ‘I am not chatting, River,’ he said. ‘I’m having a very diplomatic conversation about the fate of the planet right here.’

He could hear her gritting her teeth in frustration. ‘What’s it saying then?’ He could tell she was just humouring him. She didn’t really believe that he was conversing with the animal that had been chasing them until about two minutes ago. It was probably a good thing her gun was still in the basket, otherwise this creature may have been reduced to a rug already, or it would be when River was finished.

‘She’s not an it,’ he chided. ‘She’s a she, and her name is Silver. She says she’s from here, that she was born here, which really should not be possible.’ He threw up his hands in defeat when Silver objected. ‘No, I’m not saying that you are lying. I am merely saying that you shouldn’t be here for another two thousand years.’ He studied her. ‘And in a smaller form quite probably.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ River exclaimed. ‘I could swear you’re making this up.’

The Doctor ignored her for the time being. ‘Yes, I understand that you were born here, but your kind is not from here. What planet are you from, what star system?’ He waited a few seconds. ‘You don’t know. Well, that’s bad, but you can’t go around eating people. At the rate you’re going, you’ll work your way through the entire population within the century… Yes, I know that you’re hungry, but you can’t eat the people! They’re _blue_ , they’re amazing. They’ve still got to invent those really nice custard-flavoured sweets that are going to be very popular all over the galaxy. You can’t go _eating_ them!’

‘Priorities, dear,’ he could hear River remind him. ‘Only you, Doctor, could be thinking about _sweets_ when you yourself have ended up on someone’s menu.’

The Doctor would have loved to respond to that, but a turn in the conversation had him direct his attention back to the wolf instead. ‘No, no, no, you can’t go eating us either. There’s rabbits here, lots of rabbits. Or there will be in two thousand years or so. You can eat them. You _can’t_ eat us.’

That announcement wasn’t met with the most enthusiastic of responses.

‘Yes, you’re hungry, you said that already.’ This definitely wasn’t going according to plan. Not that there actually was much of a plan. That was still a work in progress. Making it up as he went along was how Amy defined it, which wasn’t actually true, not entirely true. He was thinking some steps ahead at the very least. ‘But you see, I can’t allow you to eat any more people… You could always try the grass. The natives of this planets do and they’ve thrived for centuries and centuries… Not as tasty? Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these plains, apart from the bones lying in it, of course.’

The wolf growled at him.

‘Ehm, River?’ he said.

‘Yes?’ Judging by the tone of voice she knew exactly where this was heading.

‘It would seem that Silver is not very receptive to reason,’ he admitted, knowing that she was never going to let him hear the end of this if they ever got out of this with their lives. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the last thing he had been told. As it happened, his screwdriver had not been a deterrent only, but also a clear sign of _Life Forms Right Here, Free Food For All._

Fortunately he didn’t need to tell River that. The downside was that the only reason he didn’t need to tell her was because at least half a dozen other wolves were already coming into view.

‘And the nasty thing about wolves, sweetie, is that they travel in packs,’ she said. ‘Did you have a plan?’

Well, he had tried. That had to count for something. ‘Just the one,’ he informed her, raising the sonic and producing the noise again. It wasn’t the best of plans, but it was something and why try to think of something new when the tried and tested way would do just as well? ‘Run!’

She growled. ‘I hate you.’

He managed to conjure up something of a grin. ‘No, you don’t.’ He was fairly certain about that at least.

This time they had at least something of a head start and every time it looked like they would lose it, he only had to sweep the screwdriver in the general direction of the wolves again to ensure that they were left alone for a very short while. What the sonic did do was to make the wolves distinctly displeased. He was for all intents and purposes torturing their ears, but it beat being torn limb from limb anytime.

River was still easily keeping up with him, but he could see her fingers clenching and unclenching, as if she was wishing for a gun in her hand. They were currently standing still, trying to get their bearings while the Doctor waved the screwdriver, picnic basket still in the other hand, at the wolves. Getting to some form of civilisation would be nice, especially since the wolves were still standing between them and the TARDIS. Either way, even if he could get back to his ship he wouldn’t leave until he had set to rights whatever it was that had gone wrong here.

‘We should go south,’ River said, reading her scanner. ‘It indicates life signs in that direction.’

Under the given circumstances that could be either good or bad. The Doctor was loath to run into any more of these beasties. ‘What sort of life signs?’

‘Probably humanoid,’ River answered. ‘It’s worth a try.’ She glanced at the wolves, circling around them now, wary of the screwdriver, but obviously contemplating the risks of damage to their hearing if they were to ignore the noise and get to them regardless. He really didn’t like those looks. ‘Doctor, give me the basket.’ Her voice left no room for any arguments.

He would have stared at her in shock if he hadn’t been too preoccupied keeping an eye on the wolves. ‘You can’t go _shooting_ them! They’re a brand-new life form, River.’ There was only one item in that basket that she would be interested in right now, after all.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘They’re a brand-new life form, about to eat us alive. Basket. Now.’

It was rather hard to argue with that and so he reluctantly did as she commanded him to.

River didn’t waste any time. She all but tore the lid off, reaching for her weapon, and she didn’t even look at the wolves as she did so. Clearly she trusted him to keep them away from her, leaving the Doctor to marvel at the level of trust she must have in him to take her eyes off the danger.

‘Be ready to run when I say so,’ she informed him.

The Doctor frowned. ‘Aren’t you going to…?’

River didn’t let him finish. ‘You’d better hope this works,’ she said. ‘If not, rest assured, I _will_ kill you.’ That was an empty threat, though. He could see a twinkle in her eyes and that well-known wicked grin on her face. She was loving every single second of this.

But she had a plan, and he didn’t have much of one, so maybe it was his turn to trust her for a change. ‘Okay…’ It sounded a bit more hesitant than he meant, but it would have to do.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He managed a nod that looked more like his usual confident self. ‘Yes.’

Her grin widened. ‘Run!’ The next second she literally threw a handful of Jammie Dodgers to the wolves.

‘ _What_?’

‘Run!’ River repeated. She had already broken into a run, throwing another couple of Jammie Dodgers at the animals, that descended on them like they hadn’t eaten for weeks, or months even. They were actually eating the cookies, even though it was obvious from the many bones they were running past that those weren’t usually part of the diet.

The Doctor had done many absurd things, but running with River Song from a pack of hungry wolves that were currently devouring his Jammie Dodgers had to be worthy of a place in the top ten.

* * *

It wasn’t River’s preferred way of dealing with the situation, that was for sure, and it wasn’t for the first time that she found herself cursing the Doctor’s unorthodox solutions to dangerous situations either. Not that this Doctor knew that the stunt with the Jammie Dodgers was actually his idea, although it was debatable how much claim he could lay to it since his older self had clearly remembered it happening this way. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, he’d call it, which summed their relationship up to perfection.

 _Good for feeding the local wildlife_ , he’d said, grinning that special grin of his when she’d seen him last and he had asked her whether or not she’d been to the Bone Meadows already. Then he’d told her to bring her lipstick, a piece of rope and Jammie Dodgers. When she had wondered whether or not that were spoilers, he asked her how else she’d know how to bring all the necessities. That impossible man! He’d ensured that she would know what to do, even when his younger self was blundering about without a clue as to what to do.

This Doctor was looking at her with a mixture of incredulity and admiration that succeeded in making her smile at him while they ran in the direction of where her scanner had detected life signs. She loved the running, loved that there were no bars limiting her freedom of movement. This was what she had been born to do.

 _Sounds like our kind of adventure_ , she had said when the older Doctor had asked her about the Bone Meadows, and he’d said that it was. At first she doubted it; he was so young, had no clue who she was and who she would be to him in the future, but he’d been right. It was the face she loved so well and they were doing all the things they normally did on adventures, minus some of the physical aspects, but that wasn’t what they were all about to begin with anyway, even if she did enjoy those physical aspects very much.

‘How did you even know they were going to eat the Jammie Dodgers?’ the Doctor asked.

‘Spoilers, my love,’ she told him and left him to ponder on that. He would work it out eventually. He’d told her in his future after all.

‘They were my Jammie Dodgers, River.’ Even though they were running, he was practically pouting now. ‘ _My_ Jammie Dodgers and you just threw them to the dogs. Rude!’

‘It was either that or the gun.’

And he didn’t like that option. She had been tempted to use it, though, even in spite of his “instructions.” Those monsters were going to eat them and she was not going to be accommodating. But her husband was made of different stuff entirely, enthralled by new life forms and with almost just as much compassion for monsters as he had for other people, always insisting on giving them a chance. And River admired him for that. It made him what he was.

And she could not afford to alienate him at this point in their relationship, when he was drawing her near as much as he was pushing her away. Once it had been up to him to make a younger her save him and love him. Back then it had been his job to preserve their time lines, their relationship as he knew it. Deep down she had always known that one day the time would come when that would be her job. But dear God, he was hard work young at times. There were moments that she honestly didn’t know how she was supposed to ever make him fall in love with her. Turned out that throwing his cookies to the wolves and running at top speed was actually the way to go about it. She should have known.

‘Still rude,’ he chided.

‘You love me that way,’ she returned.

The fact that this statement wasn’t met by some form of denial made her hearts soar.

A look over her shoulder taught her that the wolves had worked their way through the Jammie Dodgers and were now again chasing them. She reached inside the basket and threw the last of them behind her. It wouldn’t hold them up indefinitely, but it might buy them just enough time to make it to that palisade she could see in the distance. It looked old and beaten, but it would help a little in keeping the wolves out.

The Doctor had seen it, too. He’d put the sonic back in his pocket again in favour of grabbing her hand. River would almost be fooled into thinking that this really was one of their adventures, the ones they had when he was older and they were married from both their perspectives. It was giving her hope that he was slowly getting there.

The wolves were still a good distance behind them when River banged on the gate in order to be let in. She could probably blast the door open if she dug up her gun, but that would damage it beyond repair, which was not what she wanted right now. And the Doctor’s screwdriver didn’t do wood – too low-tech – which was quite frankly ridiculous given the fact that it was a _screwdriver_.

In the end it didn’t take long for the gate to be opened, even if River inwardly cringed at how fragile it looked.

But then the Doctor took over, at his most Doctorish, flashing his widest smile at the Delnosian guard. ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor and this is River. Would you mind letting us in before the overgrown wolf thingies eat us whole?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read. If you’ve got a minute, please review?


	3. Gun

‘Only you, sweetie,’ River sighed in exasperation as soon as the Delnosian villagers had left them alone for a moment. ‘Only _you_ would get us in by saying that we’re with the Wildlife Control Squad.’ But she was fighting an amused grin, so the Doctor didn’t really think she minded it.

‘Your plan to tell them we’re the building inspectors wasn’t any better, dear,’ he shot back, immediately wondering why on earth he’d called her dear. Dear suggested that they knew each other well, especially after the way he’d said it to her. Bickering like an old married couple, that was what Mr Lux had called it in the Library, after which River had gone and confirmed the theory by whispering his name in his ear. The Doctor still wasn’t sure what to do with that, but he hadn’t expected he would fall into the role that quickly, or that easily.

River shook her head in what looked like fond exasperation. ‘Wildlife Control Squad, Intergalactic Division,’ she repeated him, hint of scepticism to her tone.

‘It’s a brilliant name,’ the Doctor defended himself.

‘If you say so, Doctor.’ She really was enjoying this way too much. Truth was, now that they weren’t running for their lives and he actually had the time to think about it, he was starting to enjoy it too. Adventuring with River was not quite the same thing as adventuring with the Ponds, but thus far it was not exactly worse different. Just different.

‘Well then, Dr Song, what do you make of all of this?’ he invited.

They had been led into what the Doctor deemed the town hall while the Delnosian guards went to fetch the local equivalent of the mayor to fill them in on what was going on, so that they could do something about the situation. He was not leaving here until he got to the bottom of this. When they first arrived he had been too preoccupied with the fact that he was going on a picnic with River Song to notice it, but after stepping on the bones, he’d started paying attention.

This was _wrong_. This was never meant to be. No, Delnos Beta was not a fixed point in time, but it was wrong all the same. That was the benefit of being a Time Lord; he could sense things like that. Well, feel it was more like it.

‘Seems to me that someone has imported a bunch of wolves and has started experimenting with them,’ River said. The flirtatious smiles had disappeared. It was all business now. He’d seen that before. In that way she was not his average companion, who required information rather than giving it herself. ‘Done a patchy job of it too, if you ask me. Like someone has gone and chopped up a couple of animals and then glued the different parts to one another.’

The Doctor would have to admit that he had not noticed such a thing, but then he had mostly been concerned with the head and the fangs and with a conversation that had not turned out quite the way he’d hoped it would.

Now that he started thinking about it, though, he’d have to admit that something had seemed off. ‘They had cat tails. Why would wolves have cat tails?’

River rolled her eyes at him. ‘Doctor, why would wolves be the size of horses? Or have hooves, for that matter?’

‘They had hooves?’ How had he missed that? ‘Wouldn’t they have needed the… you know, the giant claws for hunting?’ He’d never been an expert on wildlife – most of the creatures he dealt with were not of the animalistic kind, so there had never been a need to learn a lot about them – but he was fairly convinced that wolves did not have hooves.

‘I think the giant fangs serve them well enough, Doctor,’ River pointed out.

There was no arguing with that. He’d seen those fangs relatively up close and had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

It still didn’t make sense and he said so. ‘Why would anyone unleash a couple of creatures on a planet with just lots and lots of grass? Even you humans don’t think this planet is worth bothering with. There’s just grass. And blue people. Love the blue people.’ He could see that River was starting to lose both interest and patience, and got back on track. ‘The point is that there is nothing on this planet that could be anywhere near a reason for having the population be slaughtered by wolves. There is nothing to gain here. And if they wanted the population gone, they could have invaded. These people are peaceful. They don’t even have weapons! Or hardly any weapons,’ he corrected.

River smirked. ‘I knew there was a reason I’d never heard of it.’

‘River!’ he exclaimed, scandalised, realising only too late that she was just teasing him and hadn’t actually meant it seriously.

‘You’re so easy to fool when you’re this young,’ she said, as if she was just remarking on the weather. For a moment there he could have sworn she was sad, but then the moment was gone, and she was just smiling at him.

‘Dr Song, I’ll have you know that I am not young!’ he protested.

‘You’re not as old as you will be,’ she conceded.

That was probably the best he was going to get, even if that didn’t make him do a happy dance around this hall either. Her spoilers got on his nerves, her hints at a future for them made him sometimes downright jumpy. Time was not the boss of him, so how could he possibly have lost control of his own future like that?

‘So, alien wolves on a planet for no apparent reason,’ she summarised before he could ask the question that was burning on his lips. _Who are you?_ He wouldn’t have gotten an answer probably.

‘Genetically engineered alien wolves,’ he corrected. ‘Wolves with cat tails? What are the tails for?’ To some extent he could get the hooves. The wolves were the size of horses, so clearly there had been some horse genes mixed in, accounting for the hooves. Might be a mix-up of some kind, first batch gone wrong. The tails, though?

‘At the moment I’m far more interested in finding out what the wolves are for, Doctor,’ River said, but after a moment she added: ‘Do you think the tails are important?’

‘The tails are attached to giant wolf thingies eating the local population,’ the Doctor said irritably. ‘Do I think that is important? Yes, I do.’

He couldn’t quite explain why he was suddenly snapping at her. Maybe because he had grown used to River knowing what to do, River taking charge. And she wasn’t doing that now.

It was as though she had read his mind. ‘But if those wolves are genetically engineered, that makes it almost certainly human work,’ she pointed out. ‘Wolves, horses, cats. Those are all Earth animals.’

‘Exactly,’ the Doctor said. ‘But that’s not right. Humans are not supposed to come here for another two thousand years.’ He got up from his chair, too restless to sit down. Lots of thinking almost automatically translated in some physical activity or other, whether that was running around the TARDIS console, tinkering with the wires or, in this case, pacing. ‘What are they doing here? If they’re even human. Could be another species with access to Earth animals. Lots of intergalactic trade these days.’ And he still didn’t have an answer to the most important question of the lot. ‘And why here? What is this good for? Why now?’

‘Looks like we’re about to get some answers, sweetie,’ River remarked as the door opened and the town’s mayor came in.

* * *

 

It was both familiar and reassuring to see the Doctor pace the room, sinking his teeth into a problem like a bull dog clinging to a bone. Except that he looked nothing like a bull dog, which was her luck. She had pictures of his earlier regenerations, and personally she didn’t think she would like to be seen in public with a man who thought that a stick of celery pinned to his jacket was the height of fashion. Mind you, not that this Doctor’s choice in hats – or neckwear – was much better, no matter how much he insisted it was cool.

But his behaviour was well-known to River, no matter what his age. He was just… a bit more difficult to deal with when he was this young. Just now he had gone and talked about _you humans_ , as if she was just an ordinary human, when she wasn’t. It was a painful reminder that this was not yet _her_ Doctor. He didn’t know who she was yet, even though he would find out probably within a year.

She was snapped out of her musings when the door opened and a group Delnosians came in. River had seen the guards at the gate before, but had not exactly been paying much attention to them then. At the time she had been slightly more concerned with the wolves jumping at that palisade, keeping her fingers crossed that it would hold, about which she had rather strong doubts. These people here were sitting ducks. It was only a matter of time before that poor excuse for a wall gave way and the people got slaughtered. And River Song was not exactly a Time Lord that she could feel when something wasn’t meant to be, but this was definitely not right.

Looking at their hosts now she could see why they were a peaceful people. They were humanoid in appearance, but both longer and thinner than actual humans and, like the Doctor had told her repeatedly, blue-skinned. They looked fragile, not made for fighting. Truth be told, they looked like the first breeze could blow them away.

The Doctor was already up on his feet and all but bounced over to shake the mayor’s hand. ‘Hello, I am the Doctor and this is Dr River Song, Wildlife Control Squad, Intergalactic Division.’ He flashed the psychic paper under the mayor’s nose close enough that the poor man almost had to look cross-eyed in order to get a proper look at it. Bless.

From anyone else, the whole title may have sounded absolutely ridiculous. There was no such organisation as the Wildlife Control Squad, never mind the Intergalactic Division, but the Doctor had an air about him that got people to trust him. It was the baby face, River decided. It was one of those faces that was just hard to mistrust.

‘I see,’ the mayor said.

The Doctor unleashed his widest smile on him. ‘We heard you had a bit of a problem with those giant wolf thingies outside your walls. We came to help.’

Giant wolf thingies. River suppressed an amused chuckle. This was hardly the time or place, but the Doctor’s sense of naming things was as horrible as it ever was.

‘You are most welcome, sir,’ the mayor said, offering his hand to the Doctor to shake, which the Doctor did quite enthusiastically. The mayor was swaying dangerously on his feet. ‘We had sent messages, but had given up all hope that they would be answered. No one makes it through the meadows any more these days.’ He took a step back and favoured them both with an inquisitive glance. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, I would very much like to know how you managed it.’

‘Jammie Dodgers,’ the Doctor replied, beaming at River. ‘We fed Jammie Dodgers to the wolves. Well, River fed them to the wolves. My Jammie Dodgers. Her idea to be honest. Have you met her? River Song, amazing hair, very clever. Well, for an archaeologist.’ The coherency of that speech was probably non-existent to everyone who wasn’t used to him, if those blank looks of the Delnosians were any indication.

‘At least I earned my title,’ she retorted.

For all his going on about being a Doctor, his knowledge of the medical science was hardly worth mentioning at all. If truth be told, he was rather rubbish at it. It was a good thing he had her father on board these days.

She walked over and shook the mayor’s hand as well. ‘We got your message,’ she said. Sometimes it really was better if these matters were handled by someone who knew how to form coherent sentences. The Doctor at the moment didn’t fit the qualification. Not that he did it to seem stupid, but right now his mind was going at ninety miles per hour trying to figure out what was going on around here, and carrying a conversation at the same time tended to end in disaster. ‘What could you tell us about those wolves?’

It wasn’t a very specific question, but so far they didn’t know very much yet. She’d see what she could get and work from there to narrow things down. Years of knowing the Doctor had at least gained her one very important skill: improvising. Planning ahead when her husband was involved just didn’t work. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The mayor invited her to sit, which she did, and the Doctor didn’t.

‘Wolves?’ he asked, as if tasting the word. ‘Is that what you call them?’

‘Let’s stick with that for now,’ River suggested. It was better than the Doctor’s name for them at any rate. She was quite sure they didn’t even have a name yet, not if they were indeed the product of genetic engineering.

‘So you have encountered them before, yes?’ Only a fool would miss out on the anxiety in his voice, the hope that someone had seen this before and knew exactly what to do.

‘In a way,’ she replied diplomatically. She had seen cats, she had seen wolves and she had seen horses, just not all of them squashed into one specimen. ‘What can you tell us about the wolves?’ she repeated the question she had started with.

‘It all began with the spaceship,’ he admitted.

River suppressed a grimace. ‘What spaceship?’ she prompted.

‘It landed not far from here, in the middle of the night, sixty-five days ago,’ the mayor narrated. ‘We saw it arriving, and decided to look at it after sunrise. But the next morning two of the group gathering grasses came back heavily injured, telling us about the giant beasts that had eaten their other companions. It has been like that ever since. We can’t stay within the walls.’

‘Because you need the grass,’ the Doctor interrupted. ‘The grass is your food, but it doesn’t grow in the village, so you’ll have to go out to get it. Delnosians go out, dinner time for the big wolf thingies.’

The mayor nodded. ‘Yes.’

The Doctor resumed his pacing. ‘That’s bad. That’s really very bad.’

‘Yes, I thought we had established that, Doctor.’

‘No, no, no. You don’t understand. Silver said she was born on this planet, remember?’ He looked at her expectantly.

‘You were the one talking to a wolf, sweetie,’ she reminded him. If he actually spoke wolf at all and wasn’t making that up on the spot. According to her mother he even boasted that he spoke baby, something she didn’t quite buy either.

He ignored her jab at his linguistic skills. ‘Yes, but if she was born here, actually properly born here, that means she can’t have come in the spaceship. She’d remember it.’

Now she understood what he was getting at, if she actually ran with the idea that the Doctor did indeed speak wolf – and genetically engineered wolf at that – then that led to a rather unpleasant conclusion.

‘Accelerated growth,’ she said. Very accelerated growth. If the Doctor was right, they could reproduce faster than rabbits.

‘The growth takes up a lot of energy, which is why they’re always hungry,’ the Doctor reasoned out loud. ‘But hey what, they’re on a planet with a lot of as good as defenceless people, dinner time for all.’

‘And they’ll keep on reproducing,’ River observed. If the Doctor was right at least. He had this nasty habit of being right, though, something he couldn’t help but reminding her every once in a while. Small wonder that he had such a massive ego. ‘And we have no idea how many there are already.’

‘Well, they won’t get very far,’ the Doctor observed.

‘And why is that?’ she inquired, having the feeling that there was something he hadn’t told her. It needn’t even be deliberate, he could have just forgotten. The Doctor was absolutely rubbish at explaining things.

The Delnosians looked as if they had given up trying to get this conversation around the time the Doctor had casually mentioned chatting to a wolf, an animal they hadn’t even heard of yet, and shouldn’t even know about of for another two millennia.

‘We’re on an island,’ the Doctor informed her. ‘Only so far they can go. Well, I say island, it’s a rather big island, but it is an island. So, unless they crossbred the wolf thingies with an eagle…’ He stopped himself. ‘No, no wings. That’d be rubbish. Well, they could have crossbred it with a shark or a duck or…’

In spite of the serious situation, she had to bite back laughter. ‘A duck?’ Honestly?

‘Ducks are cool,’ he said in a would-be dignified manner. ‘You humans, you love ducks! Where humans go, ducks follow. And dogs. And cats. And about a dozen other useless animals. Point is, wolves can’t get off the island, so they’ll stay here, eating all of the population within…’ He checked his watch. ‘About a year. Probably sooner.’

River could have sworn the mayor’s cheeks were a paler blue than they had been before.

‘We’re going on a wolf hunt then?’ she asked. She knew there had been a very good reason why she had brought the gun.

That snapped him out of whatever excited mood he’d been slipping into. ‘What? No! They’re a brand-new life form!’

‘You said that before,’ she said. And she didn’t have any more patience for it now than she had then. ‘And they’re a brand-new life forms slaughtering the population. So it’s either shoot them or import all the Jammie Dodgers in the universe to keep them fed. Your choice.’

She had distracted him. ‘All the Jammie Dodgers in the universe?’ he sputtered.

River only gave him one of the impatient looks she had copied from her mother, the one that said that he was rambling and they _really_ needed to go and do something useful.

It worked. ‘Right. No Jammie Dodgers. No, we are going to get them off-planet. Delnosians can go about their business and we’ll drop the wolves off somewhere with lots of rabbits and with no people. Simple.’

Simple indeed. ‘It seems your plan has some holes that need filling,’ she pointed out. ‘What about the owners?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said. ‘We’re going to talk to them.’ In hindsight, she should probably have seen that coming from miles away. ‘Dr Song, how do you feel about running a bit more today?’ And the same was probably true for that.

‘Oh, I hate you.’ It wasn’t exactly true, but sometimes she really thought her life would be so much easier if the Doctor would just blow up or shoot the danger and be done with it.

The resulting smile almost split his face in half. ‘No, you really don’t.’ He may not know who she was yet, but he was getting the measure of her, she was sure. And he didn’t give her the chance to argue – as if she would want to – because he had already turned back to the Delnosians. ‘Right, you lot. Stay indoors and don’t move. No need to feel blue.’ He stopped himself. ‘Oh, that was a bit rubbish. Anyway, not to worry, we are going to fix it. Dr Song, did you have any more of those Jammie Dodgers?’

‘In the TARDIS,’ she answered. ‘I do have a gun.’ The Doctor looked a bit reluctant. ‘It’s either that or ending up as dog’s dinner.’

He handed the basket over reluctantly. River wouldn’t deny that she felt a bit more at ease with the familiar shape of the gun in her hand. At least she wasn’t completely defenceless. And she had been trained to fight. Big wolves were not what her trainers had in mind, though.

‘I’ll set it to stunning, not killing,’ she compromised. Although she would use a setting that would knock them out for a good long while.

But it had been the right call to make, she could tell by the Doctor’s face. He adjusted his bowtie and put on that face that he always wore when he thought he was being extremely impressive. Not that this Doctor would admit to wanting to impress her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t doing it. ‘Well then, River, are you ready to run?’

Truth be told, she wished it wouldn’t ever stop.

* * *

‘Why did I think this was a good idea again?’

According to the Delnosian mayor the spaceship had landed near the lake just about ten minutes away from the village, if one went on foot and ran the entire way. He had of course forgotten to take into account that neither River nor the Doctor were in fact of Delnosian origin. Their legs were nowhere near as long as those of the natives and he didn’t think that they were as fast either.

‘It was your idea, sweetie,’ River reminded him. She seemed far more confident about the whole plan now that she was actually holding a gun. In fact, she was practically radiating confidence, which he shouldn’t find as attractive as he did.

‘Stop it,’ he warned her.

The flirtatious grin came out again. ‘Or you’ll make me?’

The Doctor suppressed the urge to flail about like a fish on dry land as he tended to do when confronted with that flirting that he really didn’t quite know how to handle. And she knew that full well. He might even go as far as to say that his reactions were the only reason why she was still doing it. But he was well over nine hundred years old; he could hold his own. ‘Don’t think I won’t.’

Her grin widened until it closely resembled the expression on the wolf’s face. ‘Promises, promises.’

He could practically feel the blush creeping onto his face. She’d done it again.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

They were still standing behind the gate, peering through a small gap to see what was going on outside. Thus far the sight had not been a very encouraging one. The wolves hadn’t attacked yet, but they hadn’t gone either. Instead they were circling around the walls, waiting until they inevitably came out. The Doctor hated to say that was a rather sound strategy.

‘Always,’ came the reply.

He beamed at her. ‘Well then. Open the gates!’ he ordered the Delnosian guards. ‘Always wanted to say that, you know.’

But River wasn’t listening to him. The moment the gate opened she was out, firing her gun at the wolves before the Doctor had even stopped talking. And she was good. Apparently she used her skills for more than just shooting his fez and creating openings in walls.

He rushed out after her, letting the sonic make the noise again, so that she would have a slightly easier job than she would have had otherwise. As expected, the wolves all cringed in response, allowing River to take down another three of them that were very much in their way.

‘Run!’ the Doctor yelled as soon as their path was free.

He took River’s free hand and pulled her with him just as she was sending a shot at one of the wolf beasties. The shot went overhead and ended in a nearby tree.

Fortunately she refrained from commenting as she ran with him. ‘Don’t you have something to feed them?’ she demanded.

‘How should I know? You’re the expert on wolf diet!’ he protested.

‘You’re the one carrying the basket,’ River retorted.

The big wolf thingies were still following, even though River had brought down their number considerably, which would admittedly have been more of a boon if there hadn’t been any more wolves arriving to the pack already present while they were in the village. But they were wary of River’s shooting abilities – as they should be – and they didn’t like the noise of the sonic any better. They were keeping their distance, but they were still following. Feeding them wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

He reached into the basket, taking hold of the first thing he felt. He threw it at the wolves – for lack of a better name and they did look like wolves. On hooves. With the tail of a cat – without thinking.

‘Sandwiches?’ River questioned.

He fixed her with a look. ‘You threw my Jammie Dodgers.’

‘Yes,’ she said with an air of an adult explaining something to a particularly slow child. ‘Because I knew that would work.’

‘Sandwiches work just fine, dear,’ he argued, fully convinced of that fact until he looked over his shoulder and saw that no, it didn’t work. He was just in time to see one of the wolves spitting a tuna sandwich back out again. ‘Or maybe not,’ he admitted. ‘Run!’

‘I was doing just that, Doctor.’

They didn’t make it in ten minutes, what with constantly having to turn around to hold out the sonic in the general direction of their pursuers so that they remained somewhere behind them and River occasionally shooting her gun, but they did make it in fifteen. River was in charge of navigation since his screwdriver was otherwise occupied and for once he was completely comfortable with letting her take the lead.

They found the ship – yes, definitely human going by the design – at the shore of the lake the Delnosians had mentioned, lying for about a quarter in the water.

_Oh._

And the Doctor realised something.

‘They didn’t land here,’ he observed. ‘They crashed.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. If you’ve got a moment, reviews would be appreciated.


	4. Gravity

‘That’s the last of them,’ River announced when she closed the door and stepped aside to let the Doctor work the magic of the sonic on it.

For a crashed spaceship it looked remarkably well. Aside from the obvious damage, the engines that were only fit to be recycled and a lot of scratch marks on the walls, this ship was fine. Some of the crew might have even survived. If they did, though, they hadn’t stayed here. The artificial gravity wasn’t working, but there was enough power here for the lights to be on, so if anyone was on board, River would like to think they would have taken that little bit of trouble to make sure they didn’t have to walk on the ceiling.

‘You shot all the wolves?’ The Doctor was probably aiming for incredulity, but he sounded closer to admiration, something that pleased her more than she was going to admit. It was difficult, trying to get the younger versions of him to fall in love with her. Older him was not automatically a reassurance that in her future she would get it right; time could so easily be rewritten. This was like walking a tightrope over a chasm in a hurricane. It was nice to get the occasional sign that she was doing fine.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Or at least all the wolves that were following us before you closed the door.’

Yes, there was definitely admiration now.

‘Any chance you could turn the gravity back on from here?’ she inquired. Not that she couldn’t climb her way up to the main control rooms, but she’d much rather not bother with it if only it could be avoided.

‘There’s a control panel behind you,’ he said. ‘If we’re very lucky…’ He was waving the sonic at a point somewhere behind her shoulder before directing his attention back to her. ‘Ehm, River, could you…?’

‘Move aside?’ she filled in the blank space. ‘Where exactly, sweetie? There isn’t all that much room in here.’ Not anywhere she could go anyway before the Doctor had restored the artificial gravity and had unlocked the door that was currently blocking their way into the ship itself. And her guess was that panel behind her also controlled aforementioned door.

The Doctor had probably just gotten the same idea, because he was blushing worse than a schoolboy with a crush. ‘Ah well. Just stay still. _Very_ still,’ he ordered.

River was very tempted to do the exact opposite, but it was probably too early for him to experience the more physical aspects of their relationship for himself just yet. And so she did as she was told, holding still while the Doctor tried to get the machinery to do his bidding. He was keeping his distance. Well, at least he was trying to keep some distance between their bodies. It hardly worked. The Doctor had all the control over his limbs a giraffe would possess after consuming several bottles of wine on a normal day, and nerves made him worse. It made her feel that bit pleased with herself that she could make him nervous, but she’d rather not take an elbow to the face as a result of it.

‘Just get on with it, sweetie,’ she told him. ‘I don’t mind the touching.’ Not at all. In fact, she’d welcome it just about now.

‘I bet you wouldn’t, River Song,’ he muttered under his breath. He was looking over her shoulder at the controls, which left his mouth next to her ear. ‘It isn’t working,’ he added in frustration.

He really was making this too easy on her, and she upped the flirting. ‘Well, I know a number of things we could do in a small enclosed space,’ she said suggestively.

This wasn’t met with outright horror, but at least with some measure of shock that would have been entertaining to watch if she could have seen his face. It took him a few moments to recover and come up with an adequate answer.

‘Oh, you bad, bad girl,’ he scolded. No doubt he would have tapped her nose like he always did if they could actually move in this place.

‘And you love it,’ she retorted. Maybe she was pushing her luck now that she made it so easy for him to deny that, but the reply was almost automatic these days.

And he didn’t deny it. ‘A bit,’ he confessed as if he was admitting to a very great crime. ‘What is it with these controls?’

River could hear the whirring of the sonic, but thus far it didn’t seem to have very much result; the door was still closed and they were still standing on the ceiling.

But really, what had they expected? ‘It’s a crashed spaceship, my love. The systems are bound to be damaged.’

‘They weren’t last time,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘Damaged, yes, but not this badly. What is it with you and me and crashed spaceships anyway?’

‘I think that’s spoilers, Doctor.’ He had mentioned something about the crash of the Byzantium when they were doing diaries, so technically she already knew that there would be more dealing with crashed spaceships in her future, but it couldn’t hurt to remind him.

River could almost feel the Doctor perk up. ‘Oh, so you’re not the only one who gets to say spoilers. I’m liking this already.’

And given the fact that he didn’t seem to like it any less in her past, that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. How surprised would he be though if she told him he had been the one she stole the word from, just as he stole it from her? In the end, neither of them had come up with it themselves. It might even be some kind of paradox.

‘Yes, I’m liking this very much too,’ she said, steering the conversation back to flirting territory. ‘Although there really could be more physical contact. You and me in a small space, well, the mind races.’ She’d said that last bit to him before, but he had been older then, less likely to be absolutely horrified when there was flirting involved. As much as she liked it when he gave as good as he got, this wasn’t all that bad either.

The incoherent sputtering was proof enough of success.

‘Can you sonic the door?’ she asked. ‘We could climb up to the main control deck and fix the gravity from there.’

‘It’s a ventilation shaft behind that door,’ the Doctor reminded her. ‘And the door isn’t a door. It’s more like a trapdoor with a handle, that just looks like a door, but humans aren’t supposed to use it to get through when they’re not the technician.’

It wasn’t as if she had been feeling like going around the ship time and again to find an opening that was more like a normal door. Either way, it wasn’t her style to do things the usual way. ‘I’m sure the word door is hidden somewhere in trap _door_ , sweetie,’ she pointed out. ‘And it’s a good thing you aren’t human, then. Anyway, I brought a rope.’

The Doctor did a step back – as far as he could go in this place – and stared at her. ‘How would you even know to bring rope?’

River smiled at him. ‘Spoilers.’

* * *

 

 That was all the answer the Doctor got, but did it frustrate him. He went first when they finally got the rope in place so that he could keep an eye out for a door that looked like it might lead to somewhere useful. Not that any of the doors he passed actually looked like doors, but that would be because they weren’t actual, proper doors, no matter how much River protested that yes, they really were.

About halfway through the ventilation shaft – and really, wasn’t that a proper cliché thing to be doing – he came upon a door-that-wasn’t-a-real-door that looked promising. And in this case not even River could disagree, because this was an air grating that looked like it came out in some sort of control room. When the artificial gravity was on, it would be the floor he would be crawling out onto, but now he would probably have a bit of a fall before landing on the ceiling. Quite frankly it was a bit ridiculous that the emergency power was on, but the gravity was not. You shouldn’t have one without the other. It was almost as if someone had switched it off on purpose. Manually. Which could mean that there was someone still on board. Somehow he didn’t like the sound of that.

‘Doctor, have you found something?’

River was climbing up behind him, so now that he had halted she couldn’t get any further. He wouldn’t admit it in a hurry, but he was glad that she was giving the flirting a rest. It was making him almost jumpy that she clearly didn’t feel like this was in any way uncomfortable. It was even more unnerving to realise that to some extent it almost felt natural, as if this was something they did a lot.

Mrs Doctor from the future, Amy had said. But time was not the boss of him and he could run away from anything he liked. He was the king of running away, he didn’t have to take part in a future he didn’t want to be part of. The thing was that he wasn’t so sure he wanted to run away all that much lately.

But it was hardly the time to contemplate River Song while they were both holding onto a rope for dear life and he was supposed to sonic the air grating out of the way so that they could get in.

‘Looks like some sort of control room,’ he reported. ‘Might be our best shot for now.’

It was, and so he unleashed the screwdriver on it, very grateful for the fact that it wasn’t deadlocked as the grating itself fell inwards. It took some manoeuvring before he managed to get himself in as well, but eventually he managed to land on the ceiling of the room. It would be something of a feat to get to the computers now, since they were located somewhere above his head and impossible to reach without a little help.

‘Strange for the gravity to be off while the power is still on,’ River remarked when she joined him on the ceiling. She looked at her feet. ‘Gives a whole different meaning to that _Dancing on the Ceiling_ song, does it not?’

‘We are not going to dance,’ he told her sternly.

‘What a waste.’ She had already taken her scanner to hand. ‘Someone must have switched it off manually. I’ve seen this kind of ship before.’

The Doctor hadn’t. It really should be a feeling he ought to be used to by now, River knowing more than he did, but it certainly didn’t mean he liked it. He had seen many spaceships in his long life, but even he couldn’t have seen them all. The basic design was definitely human, the machinery was made for humans, and so were the protective clothes he could see lying in a corner, which made the species of the owners rather easy to identify.

‘What sort of ship?’ he asked, standing on tiptoe to see if he could reach the machinery. He couldn’t.

‘Cargo ship,’ River answered as she went around the room, reading her scanner as she went. ‘Livestock, going by the evidence outside. Looks like the cages were further up. Down, now that the gravity is off. Crew’s quarters are down, nearer the engines. We’re somewhere in between.’ She finally looked up. ‘And you are not going to reach the computers like that, my love.’

He looked back at her from over his shoulder, mildly irritated by now. ‘If you’ve got a better idea…’

He stopped dead when he realised that River did indeed have a better idea and she was already pushing a chair in his direction.

‘Right.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she hinted.

The Doctor decided not to take it. Instead he climbed up on the chair and tried for the computers again. He still had to stand on tiptoe – whose idea had it been to make such a high ceiling in a spaceship anyway, talking about waste of space – but he could reach the machinery this time. From there on it was a piece of cake to find the switch that would restore the gravity in this place to normal. It would make moving around in the ship a whole lot easier.

The one thing he hadn’t calculated was that the moment the gravity came back on, his head was the first thing to acquaint itself with the floor. Unfortunately by the time he realised that, it had already happened. For a moment his vision was a bit blurry, and his head hurt, but he was conscious enough to see that River had taken the more practical approach and had held on to the ceiling so that she only had to fall a little distance before landing far too gracefully on her feet. The furniture – that was, all the furniture that hadn’t been attached to walls or floor – had come down again, lying haphazardly scattered around him. The chair he had been standing on was lying on its side just an inch from his face. And wouldn’t it have been humiliating if he had managed to get himself knocked out by a chair. River would never have let him hear the end of it.

As it was, he was already on the receiving end of her commentary. ‘Only you could forget that when the gravity switches on again your head is first in line to hit the floor, sweetie,’ she remarked, extending a hand to help him up again. ‘You all right?’

‘Yes.’ No.

‘Rule One, Doctor,’ River sighed. ‘There should be a First Aid kit in the basket.’

There had to be some use in dragging that thing here, there and everywhere with them then. ‘Why would you even bring a First Aid kit?’ he questioned. ‘Or are those spoilers too?’  
‘Just common sense.’ River was already going over the computers. ‘I’m on an outing with you, dear. Anything could happen.’

That was probably true.

‘Anything interesting?’ he asked instead of admitting that there was a lot of sense in her way of thinking.

River frowned at the screen. ‘Still trying to call up the data. It would be easier if we had access to the home box.’

‘It would have left the moment the ship crashed,’ the Doctor said. ‘That thing has been home for at least two months.’

‘I know.’ The computer made the kind of noise computers tended to make when they decided to do what the operators wanted for once. ‘I’ve got it. Looks like engine failure to me.’

Now that he was actually standing on the floor again, the Doctor permitted himself a good look around. The room itself was well-kept. Well, for a room in a crashed spaceship it was well-kept, well cared for, but the equipment here was positively ancient, more something he would expect to see in the sixty-sixth century rather than in the sixty-eighth.

River was already well ahead of him. ‘Budget cuts,’ she clarified, speaking the word as if it was the single most disgusting thing in the universe. ‘There are several requests for repairs and spare parts, but the corporation turned them down, citing that the equipment will last for a little while longer, and they don’t have the money for big repairs at the moment.’

The Doctor muttered something in Gallifreyan that would better not be translated into English.

‘I agree,’ River nodded.

That gave him pause. ‘You understood that?’ Had his older self gone completely insane? It was only a moment before he recalled that on the home box of the Byzantium she had used Old High Gallifreyan to leave her little message, indicating that she did indeed know the language, but at the time he had been too busy catching her when she had jumped ship and later when they were dealing with the Weeping Angels to pay it much mind.

‘I know a curse when I hear one.’ That answer was neither confirmation nor denial. ‘And look at that, all the doors have been deadlocked open.’

‘Not all of them,’ the Doctor argued immediately, recalling all too well how much trouble they’d had getting into the ship.

‘Those aren’t doors,’ River pointed out. ‘We climbed in through the ventilation shaft.’

‘ _You_ called it doors,’ he reminded her.

‘Yes, because we used them as such,’ she countered. ‘According to the computers, though, they aren’t actual doors. And apparently, if we had gone to the left a bit further, we would have found a real door. An open door.’

That figured. ‘We have taken the scenic route, Dr Song.’

‘I’ve really enjoyed the sights in the ventilation shaft,’ River agreed. ‘Thank you, sweetie.’ She sounded sincere and for a moment he wondered what in the world she could mean, because she could not honestly mean she had enjoyed looking at the walls, until it dawned on him that she had been climbing below him, so when she looked up she must have had an excellent view of his…

 _Oh_.

‘You are welcome,’ he said, trying to mimic that flirtatious tone, fearing it was rather failing him.

Nevertheless he was rewarded for his efforts by her laughter.

He himself found he wasn’t in the mood for laughter. His mind was racing – and clearly not in the same way River’s was – but she had mentioned doors and doors being deadlocked open. ‘That’s how the big wolf thingies got out.’

River rolled her eyes at him. ‘That is not actually a name, Doctor.’

‘It is. It is a brilliant name,’ he objected. ‘Because they’re wolves, but not quite, because they have hooves. And cat tails. So they’re wolf-like… thingies. And they’re big.’

‘Your point, Doctor?’

Right, back to business. ‘The doors would have unlocked the moment the ship crashed,’ he explained. ‘Standard protocol at a crash. The computer recognises the problem and makes sure all doors unlock and open so that the crew can get out. Except this ship didn’t land on its belly, it landed on its back. So the wolf thingies hear the noise, feel the crash, but because of the artificial gravity they think it’s coming from above.’

‘The doors open, and the first thing they’ll think about is to go down,’ River understood. She had that face on, the face she always wore when she thought he was being particularly clever.

‘Or what they think is down, because it’s really up, but they don’t know that, so off they go,’ the Doctor continued, determined to finish his reasoning before River could come in and steal his thunder. ‘But that would lead them away from the outside and to the crew, so someone thinks they’re clever and they push the button, turn the gravity off, so the wolves will go up, but it’s really down to try and escape.’

The crash was slowly starting to make a bit of sense, but there were still tons of questions he would like to have answered, such as why a standard sixty-eighth century cargo ship had such dangerous creatures aboard, where they had been headed and what the creatures had been meant for. Those wolf thingies were definitely genetically engineered, but for what purpose? Why that size? Why the hooves? And why the tail?

River nodded. ‘Well, that makes sense. But Doctor, if the crew turned off the gravity, then where are they?’

‘They could be among the skeletons outside,’ he suggested.

He hadn’t taken the time to see if there were humans as well as Delnosians. Not that he thought that all of the crew were out there. Maybe some, but not all. They would have known it was stupid to go and try after their cargo, assuming they had known how dangerous those beasties were. And if they had sent out a mayday – as would be logical – then they would want to wait on board for a reply. Some might have died in the crash, but clearly not everyone, because someone had turned off the gravity in the main control room. And there was a distinct lack of bodies in what should have been one of the most frequently populated areas.

‘Not all of them.’ River must have followed his reasoning. ‘There may be some still on board the ship.’ She had arrived at the same conclusion he had. It was one of the reasons why he liked having her around on his adventures.

‘Well then, Dr Song,’ he said. ‘How would you feel about exploring the ship?’ He had the strange feeling like he was asking her out on a date.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

* * *

 

 The ship seemed abandoned. Fortunately River had enough adventures with the Doctor under her belt to know that she’d better be careful not to believe that everything always was as it seemed. In her book it was usually the case that the more normal it seemed, the more dangerous it was. Hence the gun at her hip.

The Doctor pointedly avoided looking at it, or that was what he was aiming for more like. Every now and then he kept shooting glances at it, as if he was very uncomfortable with a weapon so near his person. In his future he still wouldn’t like it, she knew, but he tolerated it. And then there was the fact that he kind of liked it when she did that, so she didn’t mind shooting things and people in his line of sight should the need arise.

So far there hadn’t been any need. So far their trip through the ship’s many corridors had even been eerily quiet, which definitely wasn’t a good sign at all. Well, she’d say it was quiet, but the almost constant whirring of the sonic and the bleeping of her scanner rather interfered with the silence part.

‘Nothing on this level,’ she reported, looking into another room to see if there were some clues. So far all the doors they’d passed had been wide open, deadlocked open. Not even the screwdriver could shut them now. The furniture had been turned upside down, and some of it was obviously broken after having been thrown at the ceiling and then back to the ground again.

‘You’re right,’ the Doctor said, studying the latest readings of the sonic. ‘No one has been here for days.’

‘They could have moved back to the crew’s bedrooms,’ River suggested. ‘They must have known someone else was in when the gravity switched back on.’

‘There was no one on this level then either,’ the Doctor objected. ‘We would have heard them.’

‘The sound carries in here,’ she conceded. And the Doctor might not have been the only one crying out in surprise and pain when the world turned literally upside down. ‘Crew’s quarters then?’ They’d checked most of the communal areas, and they were all abandoned.

‘Crew’s quarters,’ the Doctor agreed. He shook his head. ‘There’s something I’m missing, something that is really staring me in the face…’ He trailed off, looked thoughtful and then sprinted back the way they came, leaving River no choice but to run after him to see what he had thought up now. His strokes of genius tended to be quite brilliant indeed, but would it kill him to stop and explain every once in a while?

‘Doctor!’ she yelled at his retreating back. ‘What is it?’

He looked over his shoulder and almost tripped over his own feet as a result. ‘The kitchen!’ he called back, as if that explained everything when in her opinion it really didn’t.

That was likely all the answer that she was going to get out of him before they returned to the kitchen and would see for herself what it was that it was that had gotten him so excited. Of course when she arrived, the Doctor was already there, opening cupboards and the fridge to demonstrate a point she was not yet seeing. Unless he was showing her the broken cutlery, which really was nothing out of the ordinary on a ship like this.

‘See, River?’ he asked, the well-known gleam in his eyes that indicated that he was on the scent. When his supposed cleverness didn’t trigger another reaction from her than the questioning glance, he added: ‘They’re empty.’

‘Yes, they are,’ she said, slowly starting to see where he was going, but not arriving at the same conclusion he did. ‘But the crew could have left and taken all the food with them. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Oh yes, it does,’ he disagreed. ‘You see, Dr Song. That door,’ he pointed at a door in the far corner that had completely escaped her notice on first inspection, ‘is _closed_.’

Now she was starting to see his point. ‘And it couldn’t be, because all the doors in this ship have been deadlocked open.’ She was already pointing her scanner in that direction. ‘I can’t get a reading on what is on the other side.’

‘A freezer,’ the Doctor answered, looking at the sign attached to it that said so. ‘Big one, probably, needs to hold all of the food in case of a long journey. And it wouldn’t have opened with the rest of the doors, because…’ He moved closer and unleashed the sonic on the door. ‘There’s a manual override. You’d want to keep the food fresh in case you’re stuck around somewhere for a while, but the power inside is switched off, which means…’

‘We’ve probably found the crew,’ she finished. That impossible, but clever man. And he was loving this every bit as much as she did. They attracted trouble, the two of them, and they loved it. Maybe that was why they were so well suited. ‘Can you sonic it open?’

‘River Song, you just watch,’ he told her. Was he trying to flirt with her first now? Something in that tone was far too familiar, just not when this version of the Doctor was doing it. ‘And you can’t go shooting them!’ he added as a warning.

‘As long as they don’t shoot at us,’ she replied, not impressed, hand automatically reaching for the gun, just in case.

He seemed to realise that was the best he could hope for. ‘Ready?’

River sent him her most confident smile. ‘Always.’

The sonic whirred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading again. If you’ve got a minute, reviews would be greatly appreciated. And a huge thanks for those who reviewed last chapter.


	5. Lipstick

It took him a bit longer than he had anticipated to get the door open, but after about twenty seconds the lock gave way. The door opened outward, so it went without saying that he pulled the door open while River stood right in front of it looking impressive with her gun in hand. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that yet, but at least she had more or less promised not to shoot on sight. Under the given circumstances that was probably the best thing he could hope for. It didn’t mean he liked it.

As confrontations went, this one was rather unspectacular. He pulled the door open and River stood there, looking definitely impressive – which he really shouldn’t like all that much – pointing her gun at absolutely nothing except a wall of shelves filled with more nothing.

‘Nobody here,’ he said. He’d really thought he’d found something. That was a bit of a disappointment.

‘I can see that,’ River remarked dryly. She put the gun back and took out the scanner instead. ‘But now that this door is out of the way, I could get some readings from this space. I wonder what they’re keeping here that is worth overriding the deadlock for.’

She and him both. This door would have opened – should have opened? – when all the other doors did, so someone must have gone to the trouble to close it after the crash. And why would someone do that only to guard a room filled with nothing? It didn’t make sense.

‘It’s bigger than it looks,’ River reported. ‘And I’m picking up life signs just around the corner over there.’

So there were people here after all.

‘Hello!’ the Doctor yelled into the freezer that wasn’t being a freezer at the moment.

‘I don’t think that’s going to convince them to come out, Doctor,’ River said. ‘They’re hiding for a good reason. _I’m the Doctor, I’m here to help_ is probably not going to cut it.’

He glared at her. ‘What would you say then?’ He had the unpleasant feeling it would run along the lines of _hands up or I’ll shoot_.

River shrugged. ‘Not that.’

That was not an answer in the Doctor’s opinion, and really there was only one thing to be done in this case: go in and see what was out there. In the meantime he’d better keep his fingers crossed that no one would feel the need to shoot him; he was running a bit low on regeneration energy.

Behind him River muttered something about how she wondered how he had even survived this long, had he no sense of self-preservation at all? The Doctor rather thought that he just had an awful lot of luck. Thus far no one had tried to shoot him, and the would-be freezer was rather too quiet. He kept the sonic in front of him, scanning for life signs, while River with her scanner was doing the same thing.

‘Three life signs ahead,’ the Doctor reported.

‘And two somewhere to your left,’ River added. ‘Definitely human, going by the signals.’

Small surprise, that. He’d more or less known that since they had seen the main control room, that clearly had been designed for human use. Still, it was nice to know that there wasn’t a big wolf thingy around the corner waiting to rip his throat out. Not that he had expected it; wolf thingies didn’t know how to lock doors. He doubted they had the self-restraint to wait either. No, that would not be the problem. The human trouble was often a bit more complicated.

Speaking of which. ‘Stop right there!’ a male voice shouted. ‘Drop your weapons!’

The next second he was experiencing the very unpleasant sensation of a gun against the side of his head, coming from the left, where River had said that she had detected two life signs. It was one of those days that the Doctor realised he should have paid better attention to his surroundings. Unfortunately he usually had those bright notions when it was already too late.

Reluctantly he dropped the sonic. Not that the screwdriver was a weapon, but people with guns had that annoying habit to shoot first and ask questions later.

‘We’re here to help!’ he protested.

He wanted to look back to see how River was doing, but moving sounded like a very bad idea right about now. But he was the Doctor; he could get out of any impossible situation. Today was not going to be an exception.

‘Who are you?’ the voice demanded.

‘You’ve stranded here,’ he pointed out. ‘We can help you get off-planet.’ That was not strictly speaking a lie; the TARDIS was out there somewhere, provided he could reach it before he was ripped apart by the wolf thingies. But that was a concern for later. Point number one was to get that gun away from him. Humans and their love of weapons. Some things really never changed.

‘Your names!’ the voice repeated, a little more irritated this time.

‘The Doctor,’ he replied. As long as that weapon was trained at his head it seemed like a much better plan to comply. He’d figure out what was going on here, but for the moment this man sounded like a frightened refugee who knew full well that he had done something he shouldn’t have. ‘And my friend here is Dr River Song. We’re from the Intergalactic Crash Emergency Corporation.’ The name was not actually made up. This corporation actually existed, just not until the eighty-ninth century. ‘We got your message.’

‘Prove it,’ the man said. If he was trying to sound tough and unyielding, he failed.

‘My credentials are in my pocket,’ he said.

Why hadn’t he heard from River yet? Normally she was the first in line to get involved, but now he didn’t even hear a sound. She had to be up to something. She was River Song; it was what she did. Not that he always agreed with her plans – kissing Romans exactly in order to trick them into believing she was Cleopatra, graffiti the oldest cliff in the universe, jump out of spaceships… - but they had the tendency to work, which was fine by him as long as there were please no guns involved. But he hadn’t heard someone demanding of her to drop her weapon. Had she managed to get away?

But then, River Song was not the kind of woman to run away from anything.

The best he could do was to buy them a little bit of time. Surely River would have come up with a plan of some kind by now. He rather hoped she had.

‘Show me,’ the man said. The Doctor noted with interest that this one was the only one who had spoken so far, even though he was quite sure there had been five life signs present. Only one of those was moving and talking.

Obediently he slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and produced the psychic paper, that would now be proclaiming River and himself high-ranking officials from the Intergalactic Emergency Cooperation. He handed it over.

From the corner of his eyes he could see the man – tall, muscled, brown hair, mid-thirties – take a good look at it while also keeping a very close eye on the Doctor himself. ‘If that is true, Mr Doctor,’ he began, scepticism colouring his every word, ‘then where has your “colleague” disappeared off to?’

‘Ah. She’s doing a… thing,’ he said, but trailed off when he realised how pathetic an excuse that was. ‘A very important thing,’ he carried on. He was improvising; he was good at improvising. He lived most of his life making it up as he went along, and it tended to work. It’d better work; he didn’t think he’d have enough regeneration energy left to fix a sixty-eighth century bullet to the head.

The man shuddered, although the Doctor could not see the cause for that. Well, not right away at least. But suddenly the gun was lowered and the man swivelled around. Curious as to what could have caused such a change in behaviour, the Doctor did the same.

He shouldn’t have surprised to see River standing there.

His attacker’s eyes were roughly the size of saucers. ‘Mother?’ he asked incredulously.

The Doctor blinked, and when asked about it later, he would violently deny his jaw had dropped. _What?_

Then he saw the traces of lipstick on the man’s cheek. And not just any lipstick. River’s lipstick. River’s _hallucinogenic_ lipstick.

_Oh._

Now it all made sense.

* * *

 

River should not have been surprise to find that the Doctor had completely forgotten about the two life forms that she had mentioned to his left, busy as he was to work out why a group of five people would choose to hide out in a freezer when their ship had crashed and all the cargo had escaped to go on a killing rampage around the crash site. Bless.

Fortunately there were some perks to being a trained assassin, even if she could not possibly recall most of the training. But that was something to think about some other time, preferably when there wasn’t someone holding a gun against the Doctor’s head.

She flicked off her torch and scanner disappeared between to stacks of shelves, trying to think of a better way to get the Doctor out of trouble than in a shoot-out that would doubtlessly bring his wrath down on her. He was at that age when he still had to find his appreciation for occasionally shooting things and besides, killing the attackers might be counterproductive. You couldn’t ask questions of dead people.

And there was something wrong here. There were five life signs, all of them humanoid. But there was only one attacker. Where were the other four and why were they not pointing guns at her husband? Not that she was complaining, mind, but it was strange. And strange had the annoying tendency to be suspicious.

She had diverted to the left, so she was very close to where her scanner had indicated one of the life forms. She might as well go and take a peek, see what was happening. Knowing the Doctor, his chatter would keep his attacker plenty occupied until she had worked out just what was going on here.

As it turned out, the mystery didn’t take much effort to solve. In fact, it was a rather easy one as mysteries went. There was indeed someone there, but he – human male, late twenties – was unconscious, lying on a makeshift bed of blankets with half the supplies from the ship’s med bay spread out around him. The bandages around head and right arm were proof enough that he needed the medical care Mr Attacker-with-gun had been giving him, although it seemed like his knowledge of the art he had been trying to practise was rudimentary at best. Ten to one that the other three people present here were not exactly in better condition.

Of course the Doctor had to run into the only one capable of handling a gun. He attracted trouble like a magnet. But then, so did she.

Well, they wouldn’t have anything to fear from this man in the foreseeable future, so she’d risk it to turn her back on him while she went to deal with the man who held a gun to her husband’s head. The temptation to shoot him and have done with it was certainly very much present, but all things considered, still counterproductive. There had to be other ways, and so she cast her mind back to the time not all that long ago when he had so seemingly carelessly dropped spoilers about this outing.

_Don’t forget to bring your lipstick, good rope and Jammie Dodgers._

She had already used the rope to get them into the ship and she had fed enough Jammie Dodgers to the wolves to feed a very large orphanage, so that only left the lipstick. _Hallucinogenic_ lipstick.

There were days when there were far too many risks involved in one of the Doctor’s schemes for even River, and this was one of those days. She wasn’t opposed to taking risks, but she’d rather not gamble with the Doctor’s life. If that man over there killed him, her entire life would be rewritten – fortunately they’d now passed the point where it would be unwritten, but that would only be a very small consolation – and River was not planning on letting that ever happen.

Nevertheless, lipstick was what the future Doctor remembered, which left her no choice in the matter. Her only luck was that the Doctor was still chattering on about the Intergalactic Crash Emergency Corporation – it made her smile; for a Time Lord he had remarkable bad memory when it came to dates, because as far as River was aware that corporation would not exist for three thousand years – keeping his attacker plenty occupied. Bless. The one trait he never lacked was the chattering.

She applied the lipstick and studied the situation just as the Doctor handed over the psychic paper for the man to look at. He had just realised that there should be another person here, and the Doctor informed him that she was doing a thing, a very important thing.

River stifled her laughter.

Not that it was entirely untrue, mind. They were on a mission of sorts, but it was more of a mission to get the wolves off-planet than it was to help the crewmembers of the stranded ship, although knowing the Doctor he’d kill two birds with one stone and get them to safety as well.

But she had best distract the attacker first before she started pondering about solutions. No doubt her father and mother would be sorely put out if she brought the Doctor back to them with a bullet hole in his skull.

River had years and years of experience sneaking up to people and past guards. Getting to the member of crew without being seen was a piece of cake. Of course it remained something of a gamble all the same; he’d already realised she was gone and wanted to know where she had gone off to, so it well within the range of possibilities that he would turn around to look for her. And then where would they be?

As luck would have it, he didn’t do that until she had pressed her lips against his cheek.

Having said that, it went a little downhill from that. True enough he lowered the gun and swivelled around to look at her, but the reaction she got from him was not exactly what she had intended.

‘Mother?’

River would violently deny having been surprised, and she certainly never showed it. It was always something of a surprise what the effect of the lipstick would be. Sometimes the victims suddenly thought they were somewhere else, sometimes they started seeing persons that weren’t there and sometimes they thought she was someone she decidedly was not. And River Song was nobody’s mother.

But then, she was good at improvising. ‘Hello, son.’

The Doctor was still gawping like a fish suddenly deprived of water and she hoped it wouldn’t take him too long to catch on. His acting talents varied from quite good to worse than disastrous and his tendency to flap his hands about when he talked had done him no favours in getting taken seriously. Sometimes she wondered whether or not it was inevitable that he acted the age he looked – if going by that standard, she should be glad she ended up looking the way she did – or if it was optional. If the former, she wouldn’t have minded an older face – no matter how fond she was of this one – and if the latter, she hoped he would soon get his act together.

He did fortunately the very second the man – the ID card still clipped to his chest proclaimed him to be Terry Hope – turned to look at the Doctor. This time, the gun dropped. ‘Father?’

The Doctor met this with his most brilliant smile. ‘Well, hello! Long time no see!’

River fought the urge to roll her eyes.

‘But…’ Terry Hope seemed completely flabbergasted. ‘How can you be here?’

‘Never mind that,’ the Doctor said. ‘How did you get here? Lovely freezer, I admit. Doesn’t do much freezing, which is fine. Would be a bit humiliating if I were to freeze to death, but still. Why the freezer?’

Of all the things he could have asked, he would of course choose to ask that. River for one was more interested in finding out what the wolves had been meant for. The records of the ship were remarkably silent on the matter. Not that she had much time to look at them, but she couldn’t recall any destination. Of course that had not been what she had been looking for at the time. She was a bit more concerned with finding out how the wolves had gotten where they were and, more importantly, how to get them out of here before they ate the rest of the population. Now, however, she wondered.

‘Rambling, sweetie,’ she reminded him.

‘No, very important question,’ the Doctor disagreed. ‘You’ve got a whole ship, lots of boltholes, why choose the freezer? And where are the rest of your friends?’

Well, that was one question she could answer for him. ‘Injured in the crash,’ she said. ‘Terry has been playing at being a doctor.’ It made sense, too.

The stuttering answer that came out of Terry’s mouth more or less confirmed what River already thought herself; that the freezer was the only place he could lock in the ship and in need of a locked room he was with all the wolves roaming around. The last of them had only left the ship about three days past. That was when he had last heard any noise anyway. He had also been the one to switch off the gravity in the hopes of that leading the beasts down, away from his hiding place. A good plan, River admitted in the privacy of her own mind, just not very good for the population of the planet. She doubted Terry had even spared them as much as a thought, though. He had only been trying to save his own skin.

And had left a lot of others to be devoured by his pets.

There was really nothing boyish about the Doctor’s features when he realised the same thing. He may look laughable from time to time, but he had no tolerance for people who only thought of themselves. River could see his reasoning, but they could have hidden in the freezer anyway and let the gravity on, keeping the wolves in the ship. Terry admitted that he had sent out a distress signal. He could have waited for back-up.

The Doctor knew this as well as River. She could see a lecture coming on, and so she headed it off. There were wolves out there and this was not the time to frighten the man into shutting up. He did still think they were his parents, and unless he had come from an abusive home, would not expect them to rage at him.

‘I understand, dear.’ Years of practise made her capable of even sounding understanding. ‘But where were you going with this ship?’

All of a sudden Terry seemed very reluctant to talk. He was looking at his boots with an intensity most people reserved for eyeing the person they fancied. It took three more times for him to answer the question and even then it was so soft that River had to take a few seconds to check if she had heard it in truth.

‘Delnos Delta.’

As the pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place, a uncharacteristic cold chill went down her spine.


	6. Vortex Manipulator

There were good days in the Doctor’s life, and then there were bad days. Lately the good days had outweighed the bad. Travelling with the Ponds was good for him. But this, decidedly, was turning into a very bad day indeed.

Delnos Delta.

Funny how one name could make this whole situation clear and make it infinitely worse at the very same time.

‘That’s halfway across the galaxy,’ River commented. Judging by the slight frown in her forehead she knew perfectly well what this was about and she wasn’t any more pleased about it than he was.

He only took a very brief second to wonder just how many places his future self would take her to, because the Stormcage he’d picked her up from was in what, the fifty-second century or thereabouts? This hadn’t chronologically happened for her yet. Where she came from humans had not even discovered this galaxy and wouldn’t for about five hundred years. _You and me, time and space_ , the River in the Library had told him. The more he saw of her, the truer the words started to sound. And it terrified him more than he was about to admit anytime soon.

Best keep his mind on things he knew how to handle. ‘Delivery for the local population, is it?’ he inquired. There was that sarcasm that he could not quite keep out of his voice. It wasn’t something he would characteristically do, but the more the realisation began to sink in, the stronger the anger became.

He had been to Delnos Delta a couple of time, one time to save the peace conference of 6798 – and to stop a renegade Dalek from exterminating everyone in attendance – another to show Donna the famous temples – and be sent running when he accidentally insulted their gods – and once during his ninth face to stop the humans from committing genocide. Come to think of it, that would only be about five years from now.

Not that that particular attempt would be the first, merely the most serious in a long list of attempts to clear Delnos Delta from the original owners in order to make room for all the human colonists wishing to settle there. The air was particularly good for human health, hence the influx of humans, and there was not enough room for Delnosians and humans both. And humans in this part of the galaxy were not to be counted among the most peaceful.

The realisation of what was really going on here left a foul taste in his mouth.

River’s face was calm. In fact, he would find it hard to read any kind of expression from it. but she radiated danger, and not in a good, attractive sort of way. Her fingers were fiddling with the gun now attached to her hip as if it had been glued to it.

‘Please,’ Terry – the Doctor had just discovered the identification card still clipped to his chest – pleaded. ‘I didn’t know. I promise. I had no idea. Only the captain knew.’

‘I take it your captain is currently reduced to bits of bones,’ River concluded. She sounded wholly unconcerned. ‘At least he got the justice he deserved.’

The Doctor wondered what kind of justice River had been given, seeing as how she was supposed to be in Stormcage, where only the most dangerous criminals were held. _Who is she?_

 _You’re going to find out very soon now_ , she’d said when he asked her that exact same question after the Ponds’ wedding. He hoped that was going to happen anytime soon, because he couldn’t stand not knowing something.

‘Right,’ he said, more to get his thoughts back on track than to announce that he had a plan. As it happened, he hadn’t. Not yet anyway.

‘Yes, sweetie?’ River was still keeping one eye on the crew member, but he could tell he had her attention. The flirtations were well and truly done with for the moment; she was all business. It was different from Amy and Rory on so many levels. They would be asking what to do by now. River wasn’t. River Song could keep up with him and that was something he hadn’t had in a very long time. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he could have that with Donna. But that had been a fool’s hope. From the moment he realised what had happened, he had known how it would end. But River was just human and quite amazing, intelligent and she could keep up with him without being turned into a metacrisis first.

‘We are going to repair the ship, get the wolves and let them loose on an empty planet,’ he announced. ‘And then we’re going to take the crew home.’

River gave him that look that she had given him in the National Museum as well, that look of pure scepticism that failed to insult him but for some reason very much made him want to prove that he _could_ pull it off. Not that he was trying to impress her – why would he? – but he did have a reputation to uphold. He was the Doctor after all.

‘Well, that sounds nice, Doctor,’ she said. ‘But this ship won’t fly for weeks, if ever, and the TARDIS is miles away.’ Unfortunately, there was rather more truth in her words than he would like. ‘Just how were you hoping to achieve that?’

‘Doctor?’ They had both all but forgotten about Terry until he spoke again. The dazed look caused by River’s lipstick had mostly vanished and he was looking at the Doctor as if he was seeing him for the first time. He staggered back. ‘Who are you? What did you do to me?’

‘We’re from the Intergalactic Crash Emergency Corporation,’ he replied, flashing the psychic paper under his nose again. ‘The Doctor and Dr River Song. Oh, Doctor and Doctor, that does sound cool. We could be a team.’

River only rolled her eyes. ‘We are a team,’ she said. There was a little hesitation there, though, as if she was not entirely sure about it, almost as if she expected him to contradict it, which he was not about to do.

‘Yes, we are,’ he agreed. Being in a team with River Song was something he could live with. It were the other aspects she kept hinting at but never divulged that were driving him up the wall. ‘Well then, team, what was your idea?’

River didn’t miss a beat. She pulled a small object out of her pocket and dangled it in front of the Doctor’s nose. ‘I’ll go and get the TARDIS, while you fix this ship.’ It sounded more like a command and less like a suggestion. Oh, he had been right about her. She was good. For an archaeologist.

But not that good that he was about to let her go and do this. ‘You are not flying my TARDIS,’ he protested. ‘And that…’ he pointed at the vortex manipulator, ‘is no fit way to travel, Dr Song.’

‘It’s a vortex manipulator, sweetie.’ There was that flirtatious smile that was doing rather strange things to his hearts again.

‘Cheap and nasty time travel,’ he countered. ‘If anyone is going to use that, it should be…’ The rest of that sentence trailed off when he realised that River had completely ignored him; she was already gone. ‘Me,’ he ended lamely.

* * *

 

It was something of a relief to be back inside the TARDIS. And thank goodness she had known better than to land outside those doors; the scanner indicated that there were still more than enough hungry wolves prowling around, just waiting to see if more people would come through that door.

River patted the console in greeting. ‘Hey, old girl,’ she muttered.

The TARDIS hummed in response, a friendly and reassuring presence in the back of her head, something she’d felt from the moment she had first walked through those doors, even when she was rebellious young Mels and she had shot the console. Well, truth be told, she had been aiming for the Doctor, but he’d moved at the last possible moment.

‘He’s so _young_.’ It was easier to say it when it was just the TARDIS who heard her. It certainly wouldn’t do for the Doctor to hear it. He only scoffed and snorted when she said things like that. And it wasn’t his fault. He just wasn’t there yet. He wasn’t her Doctor yet. He would be, in time, if she performed her task well.

But it was hard work, and she wasn’t certain the Doctor even wanted this, wanted her. True, he had shown up at her cell, but it had been the first time he’d ever done that. He kept getting younger. There wasn’t much that could frighten River Song these days, but seeing the Doctor slowly forget her – if that was even the right word to use – that scared the living daylights right out of her. She remembered telling her father – although in fairness he didn’t know that he was her father then – that there would be a day when the Doctor wouldn’t know her, when he would look into her eyes, ask who she was and not even know her name.

‘He doesn’t know yet,’ she told the TARDIS. ‘This him, he’s just gotten himself a diary. He doesn’t know who I am, he doesn’t know what we are and it feels like he is just pushing me away time and time again.’

All it took for her to fall was Berlin. She had already been intrigued by him long before she met him in person. The Doctor needed much more persuading. So she had to smile and flirt and be there, be what he needed her to be. And there were times that it was almost without effort, times that she almost forgot this was not quite her Doctor yet. It happened when he called her dear, it happened when he bopped her nose, when he took her hand to run and when he did his best to impress her, whether he was aware he was doing it or not.

And at least she could say it here and be sure that no one but the TARDIS could hear her. And the old girl had always had a soft spot for her, no matter what time. There was a soft comforting sort of feeling in the back of her mind.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Come on, before himself gets into even more trouble.’ Knowing the Doctor, that was not completely out of the range of possibilities.

Flying the TARDIS was easy. It always had been that way. It was the Doctor who danced around the console with flailing limbs, pretending he knew what he was doing when really he was just making it up as he went along.

She parked the TARDIS in the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to land on one of the crew members and at least the kitchen was empty. Now all she had to do was find the Doctor and help him to somehow get the ship working again, gather all the wolves and get rid of them. And she had a feeling the Doctor would like a word with whoever had ordered the creation of these beasties for this specific purpose.

‘Ah, River, you’re back,’ the Doctor said, swivelling around from where he had been standing, near the kitchen sink. One peek over his shoulder told her that said sink – now filled with water – had become the final resting place of Terry’s gun.

‘Shame about the gun,’ she remarked. ‘I could have used a spare.’

He sputtered for a few seconds. It was so easy to wind him up when he was still this young. ‘Oh, you bad, bad girl,’ he chided, clearly the best he could come up with.

‘You love it,’ she returned.

He didn’t correct her.

‘Well then, what are we up to?’ she asked. ‘You do realise this ship will never fly again, don’t you?’ He should have understood that at the very least. ‘All the doors are deadlocked open. The sonic won’t help much in closing them.’

‘I knew that.’ He had that face on that betrayed that he hadn’t spared it as much as a moment’s thought. Bless. Sometimes she did wonder why she let him go out on his own. He was a genius, the most brilliant man she had ever known, but sometimes… ‘But there is something you don’t know!’

She raised an eyebrow in a silent request for him to elaborate.

He was on a roll now, eager to impress. ‘If we hack into the system, there is an override for the deadlock that will close the doors. You wouldn’t want to be crashed in an ice field and freeze to death because you couldn’t close the doors. No, humans can be quite smart, so they develop an override.’ He looked at her, smugness written all over his face. _See, River, don’t you think I’m terribly clever?_

The corners of her mouth curled up of their own volition. That was her Doctor, right there. ‘Even so, sweetie, these engines won’t work.’ They had been outdated and faulty even before the crash and given that the engines were the reason this ship crashed in the first place, her faith in the ship’s capacities were practically non-existent.

His confidence did not falter for even a matter. ‘We don’t need engines,’ he declared. ‘Why would we need engines? Engines are boring.’ He made one quick dash and took her left hand in his, using the free one to unstrap the vortex manipulator. ‘We, Dr Song, have a better way.’

‘Cheap and nasty time travel,’ she quoted him. But it might just work; it had gone well enough when he wired her previous vortex manipulator into the Pandorica. Granted, the Pandorica had been a great deal smaller than the ship they were standing in.

‘Rude,’ he said, bopping her nose again before making off with the vortex manipulator, leaving River little choice but to follow. Clearly he had come up with the first hints of a brilliant plan while she was gone to fetch the TARDIS. Which was good. But getting the ship flying again was only the first step. Stopping a genocide from taking place would be the second.

‘Where has Terry gone off to?’ she inquired. Not that she minded his absence – in fact, she was rather glad to be rid of him – but last she checked he had been rather eager to take a shot at the Doctor. And no one was allowed to shoot the Doctor but her.

‘In the freezer,’ he said. ‘Which should start working again sometime soon if I can get the power back. Basic life support won’t do in deep space.’

River rather thought that would be the only place she would find suitable to release the wolves. They’d be well rid of them and there was no risk that they could start feasting on any sort of local population again. But of course that plan was never going to get her husband’s seal of approval. And she loved him for that, for wanting to protect life no matter what form it took, but it was just so bloody impractical at times.

Instead of offering her opinion, which would go entirely unappreciated under the given circumstances, she turned her attention to the nearest terminals to get a better look at what possibilities they still had with this ship. The Doctor was right at least about the engines; they were fit to be put on display in a museum for outdated technology, but not for much else.

‘Look at this!’ The Doctor had commandeered the other terminal, calling up the protocols they would need to get control back over the doors. ‘You beauty.’  
The temptation was too much to resist. ‘I do my best,’ she said, plastering on her most winning smile, knowing full well the comment had been directed at the computer rather than at her.

The Doctor made a choking sound and, if her experience was anything to go by, it also involved a fair bit of flailing arms. ‘I didn’t mean you,’ he said, before correcting himself. ‘Well, you too, I suppose, but _don’t_ tell Pond I said that.’ Because Amy would never ever let him hear the end of it. River knew, from stories Amy had told her when she was still Mels, that she had met a time-travelling archaeologist who she was sure would be Mrs Doctor once the Doctor finally got his head out of his arse and did something about it. _Oh mother, you had no idea._

She turned around, unleashing the full benefits of the smile on him. ‘Thank you, sweetie.’

He gave her a dark look. ‘Like you don’t know. Is there _anything_ you don’t know?’

Yes. There was something she didn’t know. She had no idea how this Doctor, the one that flirted with her one second and then was utterly wary of her the next, would ever become her Doctor, who took her on semi-romantic dates to faraway planets – which ended in running for their lives at least half of the time – and did his best to show off to impress her. This was not a Doctor she could show weakness to, because that was not what he needed from her. She’d seen it already, back in the village, when she didn’t have a clue what was going on any more than he had. He’d almost looked disappointed in her, expecting she would have all the answers, given that she seemed to know all about him and his future.

But that was only because she had already lived it and he still had all of that ahead of him. And it was in moments like this one that she missed her Doctor the most.

‘Well, I don’t know where you’re planning on taking the wolves, dear,’ she replied, which was an altogether safer answer and not even a complete lie. ‘Although there is this nice little planet at the edge of the Lihor system that’s completely uninhabited. So small they didn’t even bother to give it a name other than Lihor 7. They did contemplate revoking its planetary status, until someone convinced them otherwise.’ It’d be no use telling him that was something the Doctor himself had done or, in this case, would do. ‘Of course we would have to take them there sometime in the eighty-seventh century. We can’t have another picnic ruined, although I wouldn’t be surprised with your track record.’

‘Spoilers, Dr Song!’ he chided. ‘And there is nothing wrong with my track record. Trouble generally finds me, not the other way around.’

That was such an obvious falsehood that River did not even bother to correct it. ‘So, Lihor 7 it is then?’

‘I was going to take them to the Zoo,’ the Doctor said.

River turned around. ‘The Zoo?’

His eyes lit up now that there was something she apparently didn’t know and he got the chance to show off. Some things really never changed. ‘Yes, River, the Zoo. Great, big planet that’s been turned into a Zoo. All sorts of animals, we should visit sometime. It’s cool.’

River arched an eyebrow. ‘You want to stick the most dangerous predators in the galaxy in a zoo, sweetie? Right next to the zebras and giraffes? Why, Doctor? Were you planning on visiting?’

His face fell.

‘Right then, uninhabited planet at the edge of the Lihor system,’ she said. Inwardly she cringed at her own decisive tone. Something had changed between the moment they had entered the spaceship and now. And during that time he seemed to have lost the tolerance for her being occasionally cleverer than he was. He was so unpredictable when he was this young. And this was going to rub him the wrong way.

And it did. ‘Lihor.’ The one-word reply spoke volumes.

She worked in silence after that. The Doctor was right; there was an override for the deadlock, but it was technology way more advanced than the technology on the rest of the ship. ‘Patchwork,’ she remarked, more meant to be commentary to herself than to the Doctor. The corporation must be a collection of cheapskates; they only replaced what had really given out and left the rest until that too died of very old age.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Very patchy patchwork. Oh, look at this, River, haven’t seen a system like that in ages. I wanted to install it in the TARDIS once, but she deleted it when I went to take a shower.’ His grumpiness seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come on; he smiled widely at her as he pointed at the screen to indicate the system in question.

Well, at least she was in calmer weather for now. ‘They proved that it didn’t work ages ago,’ she pointed out.

He shot her an indignant look. ‘It was cutting edge, River,’ he reprimanded her, tapping her nose.

‘Two hundred years ago,’ she countered.

‘I’ve got a time machine; it can be two hundred years ago in an hour.’ He thought he was so impressive and, if she was really honest with herself, he was, just a bit. ‘And that is better than digging in the mud looking for lost treasures.’

‘As opposed to stealing the treasures from the owners while they still live. I think that’s considered theft on most planets, sweetie.’ Because contrary to what he liked to think, the Doctor was not exactly a saint. River knew there were warrants out for his arrest on more planets than she had fingers and toes to count them on and a fair few concerned the illegal removal of objects from their home.

‘For the tenth time, River, Cleopatra _gave_ me that vase.’ He sounded a little annoyed, but there was that twinkle in his eye that told her she hadn’t reached the danger zone just yet. This was banter, their banter. ‘The real one, not the you-one. It was a gift.’

River, as it happened, didn’t know anything about any vase. ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Doctor.’

He coloured a bright crimson. ‘Oops. Spoilers.’

Her smile widened. ‘So, I was there, was I?’ That’d be something to look forward to. Because as long as he could say spoilers, it meant there was always another adventure that still had to happen for her, a sign that, no matter how young he was, it wasn’t over yet. There was still more to come.

The Doctor did what the Doctor did best and changed the subject. ‘And, gotcha.’ He pushed one last button with a flourish. The result became apparent almost immediately when the doors hissed and clicked as the deadlock released. ‘See?’ _Don’t you think I’m terribly clever?_

No matter what he claimed, he was showing off, very much so, trying to one-up her on basically everything and then expected to be showered in praise. But that was what he had companions for. And, as his wife, she had to do her best to keep his ego at least somewhat in check.

‘Very impressive, sweetie,’ she said. It wasn’t undue praise, but it wasn’t the gushing he’d been fishing for either. ‘Well then, the doors work again, we’ve got our destination, so how do we get the wolves on board?’

The Doctor practically grinned. ‘With bait.’

* * *

 

Three hours, one shopping trip, one prison visit – really, it was just a misunderstanding – and one daring escape later they were back on the spaceship before Terry and his patients could have had any time to miss them.

‘You know, when I asked if you were going to lure them in by dangling a doughnut in front of their noses, I didn’t think you’d mean it quite so literal, Doctor,’ River grumbled. She was balancing boxes over which she shot him the most deadly glare he’d seen in a while. In a way it reminded him of Amy. She would have that exact same look when he had announced a brilliant plan that was just the slightest bit reckless and she demanded more answers. It was a bit unsettling really.

‘It’s not a doughnut, River,’ he pointed out, rather unnecessarily. ‘They’re Jammie Dodgers.’

‘We are going to lure them back into the ship with Jammie Dodgers.’ There was no way he could have imagined the incredulity in her voice. ‘You must have gone addle-brained in your dotage.’

He turned back to shoot a glare at her over the boxes of Jammie Dodgers he was holding. ‘You said I was young, River.’

Her mouth was hidden from sight – he could only see the top of her nose and her eyes – but he could have sworn that she smiled. ‘I said you are not as old as you are going to be. Not the same thing.’

He shook his head – and would have shaken his finger at her as well had it not been for the Jammie Dodgers – in triumph. ‘No, you called me young. Time Lord memory, Dr Song. You can’t beat that.’

‘Says the man who can’t remember how to fly his own ship properly.’

‘I fly her perfectly,’ he protested. And if sometimes he did not land quite where he had anticipated, it was because the TARDIS had plans of her own, which often as not involved him getting into trouble. It wasn’t his fault.

‘For someone who didn’t pass the driving test,’ River countered.

Where did she learn all of that? What was he going to tell her and what had she found out on her own? River Song was tight-lipped enough when it came to her precious spoilers, but she was flaunting her knowledge about him at every occasion and it was making him jumpy. She didn’t even seem to do it knowingly all the time – although the Doctor strongly suspected she liked seeing him in something of a fluster – so she must know him really well. While intriguing, it also gave him the urge to run, away from her or towards her. He wasn’t sure which yet.

‘You never passed the test either,’ he accused her. It was a bit of a guess, but as far as he knew River Song was perfectly one hundred per cent human and humans did not attend the Academy on Gallifrey, so there was no way she could have learned how to fly a TARDIS there, ergo he had been the one to teach her, except River said he hadn’t. _A shame you were busy that day._

One day, these spoilers were going to drive him ‘round the bend.

She smirked. ‘Guilty as charged. But then, I never took the test in the first place.’ She dropped the boxes on the nearest table. ‘Well then, Doctor, shall we go and leave a bread crumb trail for our hairy friends?’

‘Yes, we shall.’ This was the action part. He was good with the action, better than with this flirty sort of banter anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the ridiculously long delay. There are lots of little reasons, which you probably aren’t interested in, so I’ll just stick to saying I’m sorry. I’m trying to get back on track with this, so the wait for the next chapter probably won’t be so long.  
> As always, reviews would be welcome. I’d love to hear your opinion.


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